Flowering cherry trees, also known as ornamental cherry trees, paint your yard with showy blooms. These cherry trees aren’t grown for edible fruit. Instead , they bear no fruit or small, bird-attracting drupe. Flowering cherry trees generally to grow 24 inches each year, but some are believed to develop 36 inches each year. They grow best in moist, well-drained, acidic soil in a website featuring full to partial sun.
The Fastest
The quickest growing flowering cherry trees grow 3 feet each year. Yoshino flowering cherry (Prunus yedoensis), also known as Potomac cherry and Tokyo cherry, has a canopy in an oval, curved or umbrella shape which reaches 35 feet tall. Its fragrant pink blossoms blossom in winter or spring, along with its leaves turn bronze or gold in fall. Pink star flowering cherry (P. serrulata “Beni-Hoshi”) comes with an umbrella-shaped canopy which attains 25 feet tall. Its purple, purple blooms blossom in spring and its leaves turn red, orange, bronze or gold in fall. Both trees bear small, black drupe in summer or beginning of winter and develop in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 5 through 8.
Graceful Weeping Branches
Akebono flowering cherry (P. yedoensis “Akebono”) and weeping Higan cherry (P. subhirtella “Pendula”) possess graceful, weeping branches and keep pink blossoms in winter or spring. The canopy of this Akebono flowering cherry grows into a rounded, umbrella or vase shape and gets 25 feet tall at a rate of 2 feet each year. It’s fragrant flowers. Pink higan cherry (Prunus × subhirtella “Rosea”) comes with an oval, curved or umbrella shaped canopy and gets 25 feet tall at a the slow rate of 2 feet each year. Both trees bear small, black drupe in summer or winter and have leaves that turn gold or bronze in fall.
Loamy to Sandy Soil
Mount Fuji Japanese flowering cherry, also known a Mount Fuji cherry (P. “Shirotae”) and Shirofugen flowering cherry, also known as Japanese flowering cherry, thrive in loamy to sandy dirt and have fragrant blooms. Both trees grow 24 inches per year to receive 25 feet tall and yield small, black drupe in winter, summer or fall. Mount Fuji provides purple, purple or white flowers bloom in spring or winter. Shirofugen bears aromatic white or pink blossoms in summer or spring.
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 9
Slightly warmer climates of USDA hardiness zone 9 can nevertheless relish flowering cherry trees, including, the Kwansan Japanese flowering cherry (P. serrulata “Kwanzan”). This tree typically grows 2 feet each year and gets 25 feet tall, but the height of a single in California is 43 feet. It’s an oval, curved or umbrella-shaped canopy, and has fragrant, pink or rose flowers in spring which become small black drupe a season or two later.