Japanese Flowering Cherry
Prunus serrulata · Rosaceae · 야산벚나무
How to spot it
Marked by thin, glossy bark with conspicuous horizontal lenticels, alternate simple toothed leaves, and abundant spring flowers.
Look
- Leaves
- Alternate simple leaves, ovate to lanceolate, with toothed margins.
- Flowers
- White to pink flowers open in spring. Whether they are single, semi-double or double, and their color, vary by cultivar.
- Fruit
- Small, round, black drupes. Many ornamental cultivars bear no fruit.
- Bark
- Reddish-brown to gray bark with horizontal lenticels.
Where it grows
- In Korea
- Native (Korean Peninsula)
- Native to
- China, Japan and Korea.
- Ecology
- NC State records it as a larval host plant of the American butterfly Papilio glaucus and says birds eat the fruit.