Please don’t tease me … Cherry blossoms this year in Kanagawa Prefecture

 

Two months ago in January, weather forecasters told us that it was a warm winter, and thus cheery blossoms would come early, maybe around 20th of March as in 2023. Now, it is March 24th, and the “official” opening doesn’t come to Kanagawa Prefecture. “Official opening” = The first day when a specimen tree has more than 5 opened flowers. Specimen tree for Kanagawa Prefecture is in Yokohama Local Meteorological Observatory at Minatono-mieruoka Park.” It has been a cold week. So far we have not had many March days that reached more than 15°C for max temp. Accordingly, cherries are not yet ready for blossoming … maybe.

Violets are open.

Last week, I planned to see cherry blossoms in one of the well-known hiking courses. It was a fine warm day compared with the previous days. The spot was in the southern part of the prefecture (more to this next week), so I expected I could meet early blossoms under relaxing sunshine. Nah. Yeah, there were lots of cherry trees along the trek, but no tree had flowers. Their buds looked very tight yet. When a cherry tree is ready to open its flowers, the buds have bright pale green which will be calyx supporting the petals when it‘s open. I could not find a tree reaching to this level of readyness. Sad.

Eyes tightly-shut

If all of them open, it‘ll be spectacular.

According to Dr. Hisanori Itoh, Prof. Emeritas of Kyushu Univ., when cherrys could not experience enough cold days of winter, they feel groggy even when spring comes. So, they cannot burst out their flower, but start to open them in a protracted way. For the worst case scenario, before all the flowers open the temperature reaches the level of early summer, and so the cherrys fail to acomplish full bloom. In Hachijojima Island 八丈島, this is already happening, and people cannot enjoy the spectacle there. I don‘t think we are at this stage in Kanagawa Prefecture yet. But still ...

They are all cherrys.

Please keep crossing your fingers for me to be able to tell my adventure next week with cherry blossoms.

Wind flowers were already open.

If you find environmental issues in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター

657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121

〒243－0121　厚木市七沢657

Phone: 046-248-0323 You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/