The Fugenzo Cherry Blossom (Cerasus lannesiana ‘Albo-rosea' Makino)

The Fugenzo Cherry Blossom (Cerasus lannesiana ‘Albo-rosea' Makino) is one of the Oshima Satozakura cherry blossom cultivars that my participants can enjoy during the annual JDS Hokkaido Photo Tour. An agriculturally engineered cultivar, it is thought to have been initially created during the Muromachi period (1336-1573). The name 普賢象 (Fugenzo) for this sakura variety contains the kanji characters 普賢 (Fugen), which are the Japanese equivalent of Samantabhadra, a bodhisattva in Buddhism associated with practice and meditation, who rides on a white elephant, what the (象) character represents. A prevailing theory is that the voluminous white petals have the shape of an elephant’s ears. The Fugenzo blossom’s elongated pistil is said to represent an elephant’s trunk, and I encourage all my participants to inspect the blossoms up close to see the variations among the blossoms while photographing them. The variety of pistils and petals is as varied as the elephants themselves. Fugenzo blossoms are similar to the Kanzan and Ichiyo varieties as yaezakura or double blossoms because of the amount of petals each blossoms possesses, 20 to 50 petals, and the overall diameter is close to 5 cm (2 in). The petals are white on the inside but give way to pink on the outside, so their overall appearance is a pale pink. As the blossoms remain on the trees, the pink slowly fades, and they become almost entirely white in appearance. Some rarer varieties are called Shiro Fugen (白普賢 ) which have exclusively white blossoms. The Fugenzo cherry blossom trees are relatively cold-resistant, so they are more common in areas below the Tohoku region of Japan. Blooming later than the more prevalent Somei Yoshino variety, the Fugenzo sakura blossoms from mid-April to early May.