Stephen Middleton from the brilliant Friends of Alexandra Park is kindly introducing us to some of his favourite trees across the 196 acres of Alexandra Park. Here’s his selection for November…

A tree flowering in November! Stand below the Rose Window and look for the third tree to the right of the westernmost set of steps down to the road. The Winter Flowering Cherry (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’) flowers at variable times in the autumn, winter and early spring. It normally blooms after the leaves have dropped, however, this year it is putting on an especially good display flowering alongside the last of its golden autumn leaves. 

Look closely at the flowers. They are described as semi double and are generally white in colour with the odd pink one. 

What does semi double mean? Single flowers have just one row of petals. Double flowers have more petals and the centre of the flower is not visible. Semi-double flowers have more than one row of petals, but you can still see the centre of the flower.

Our Tree of the Month is a hybrid of two species of cherry native to Japan Prunus subhirtella (also called Prunus itosakura) and Prunus incisa.

This particular tree is the ‘Autumnalis’ cultivar meaning that it is one clone of the hybrid and has to be grafted in order to propagate the tree. There is another similar cultivar Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis Rosea’, but, as you might guess from its name, that tree has all pink flowers.

There are more winter flowering cherries nearby, but they are not as yet giving such a good display of flowers. These trees commonly flower quite sparsely, but over a long period of time.

The winter flowering cherry has a typical cherry type bark with horizontal lines of white marks called lenticels. These allow the transfer of gases helping the tree to “breathe”.

This type of cherry is nothing new, they were first introduced into this country way back at the turn of the last century.

There is not much else in bloom as regards trees in the park at present, but with some odd weather earlier this year there are hawthorn hedges by the Pavilion Car Park to be seen with quite a few flowers.