The Cherry Blossom Now

20-24 April: 1st Microseason of Kokuu (Grain Rains)

Apr 25, 2024

Hello, and thanks for reading my newsletter, on art and the seasons.

Yesterday marked the end of another microseason - the first in our next small season, called Kokuu. It only occurred to me recently that this is the microseason of the much-loved cherry blossom here in Scotland. We have a later bloom than in Japan, where they typically blossom in late March, according to the microseason Sakura hajimete saku.

Prunus Serrulata, or the Japanese Flowering Cherry, is naturally not native to the UK. Nevertheless, they are everywhere - lining most streets and pedestrian paths here in Edinburgh. Because of their short blossom, I often forget which are the flowering cherry trees, only to be reminded with the flourescent hues they bear in the springtime.

Like the Magnolia, Cherry Blossoms have often caused people to reflect on the frailty of life and the movement of time. I’d like to share two poems on the topic - the first by A.E. Houseman, and the second by Basho Matsuo.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A lovely spring night
suddenly vanished while we
viewed cherry blossoms

Controversially, I do not love the cherry blossom. I can enjoy them from afar, but up close their pink colour is almost a bit sickly for me. I much prefer the white flowers of the native wild cherry, prunus avium:

Nevertheless, I have been grateful for the friends who have sent me pictures of blossoms to draw for this microseason. This sketchbook page is also split into panels to celebrate the ubiquity of blossoms here in Edinburgh.