Tai Haku Heralds Spring

Spring is magnificent in the Pacific Northwest. It is also the predominant season starting sometime around the end of February and lasting until mid July. The good part of that is that it shortens the winter. On the flip side it also shortens our summer. Nonetheless, we greedily await the onslaught of blossoms - ornamental cherries, magnolias, daffodils, azaleas, rhododendrons, camelias, primulas, aubretias, bluebells, lily-of-the valley, flowering currents, tulips - the list is exhaustive. In our yard, we await the exuberant clusters of white flowers on the Tai Haku cherry in our back yard.
Originally from Japan, it was extinct in its native land and known only as the "Great White Cherry" or Tai Haku. Then Botanist Collingwood Ingram found a tree in a garden in Sussex, England that had been sent long before from Japan. He was able to identify it from an 18th-century Japanese print as the variety long extinct in its native land. It has the largest flower of all the ornamental flowering cherries. In the last couple of days, the flowers have started to open, officially heralding the beginning of spring in our back yard.