TREE OF THE MONTH

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to latest Tree of the Month

 

Prunus 'Kursar'

March

There is hardly a month's-worth of admiration in this cherry (or perhaps any flowering cherry), but for ten days it is a bright signal of what's to come. It flowers earlier than its parent, P. sargentii, which in all other ways is a better tree. But 'Kursar' puts a positive note of powerful pink in the garden in mid-March, and reminds us of its breeder, Captain Collingwood 'Cherry' Ingram, whom I once interrupted weeding his garden, The Grange at Benenden, when I was prospecting for The Garden in 1977.

Ingram almost single-handedly promoted Japanese flowering cherries in Britain. He went to Japan in 1926, principally as an ornithologist, but the cherries must have spoken louder than birds.. His grandfather founded The Illustrated London News and his brother, Sir Bruce, edited it. Collingwood was in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and studied birds, it is said, from his plane.

 

 

 

 

Back to January's Tree of the Month

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.