The winter-flowering cherry (Prunus x subhirtella) at the end of our road had been caught in a blizzard for months, flurries of flowers hanging from its bare branches like snowflakes that had forgotten to melt. Now its blossom has mostly fallen and turned to slush, but further along the bank, cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera) flowers are unfurling – five snow‑white petals pushing against the protective enclosure of green sepals until the rounded sepals open and arch backwards, where each remains, reflexed, barely touching the two adjacent petals at its base.
This parting of the ways helps distinguish cherry plum from its near neighbour, blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) – a common misidentification in early spring. Blackthorn usually blooms a few weeks later and has sepals that remain flush to the underside of the opened petals.
Every day more flecks of white spangle the cherry plum hedges, once planted as windbreaks along the old field paths that now lead up through housing estates. Nearly a century ago, the Hitchin botanist Joseph Edward Little noted that this precocious prunus was often planted to mark boundaries in and around the town as an alternative to quickset (hawthorn) hedging, and that it was popular in the villages for fence-mending.
A hundred years on, you’re more likely to come across the purple foliage and pink flowers of Prunus cerasifera var. pissardii: an ornamental variety widely planted as a street tree. Named after the Frenchman who introduced it to Europe in around 1880 (Ernest François Pissard, gardener to the Shah of Iran), it has acquired the unfortunate nickname “Prunus piss”.
Beneath the white cherry plum blossom, the verge outside our house has erupted in violets. Every spring I forget which species they are, so I must kneel in yearly obeisance on the damp grass, bending back the flowers for another sepal inspection. The blunt tips of these leaf-like structures tell me that this is not a bank where the early or common dog violets grow, as both species have sharply pointed sepals. These are sweet violets most likely, though they could be hairy violets or even hybrids of the two. I’m not sure I could tell. That’s one of the many delights of nature – there’s always something new to learn.
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