Higan Cherry

 Prunus x subhirtella

This medium-sized deciduous tree fully flowers in the spring and produces pink buds and white flowers during the warm autumn.  Its fruit is small, black, and bitter and provides food for avian wildlife.

Weeping Higan Cherry is a weeping flowering cherry tree from Japan. It is deciduous, grafted, and grows up to 40 feet tall and wide with pendulous branches that are ascending, slender, pendulous, scabrate, and have double pink flowers in umbrels of 2-5 blooms in spring.  It prefers moist, well-drained soils of average fertility in full sun, but is adaptable to poorer soils, compaction and dry soils once established. This plant has no good fall color. Several cultivars of this species are pendulous and part of the Pendula Group of cultvars. 

The trees are grafted onto Prunus avium rootstock at 4-5 ft in height. Be sure to prune off any growth at or below the graft as it will not have a weeping form. Weeping branches can be pruned shorter to allow for walking and mowing under or for plantings under the tree.

Susceptible to many viral and fungal diseases and insects. Potential diseases include cankers, black knot, leaf spot, dieback, leaf curl, powdery mildew, root rot and fireblight. Potential insects include aphids, scale, borers, leafhoppers, caterpillars, tent caterpillars and Japanese beetles. Spider mites may also be troublesome.