Japanese name: ホシザクラ（星桜） Scientific name:Cerasus tamaclivorum
[Overview]
A deciduous tree about 12 m tall, presumed to be a hybrid of Mame-zakura and Edo-higan.
It spreads by sending out runners from the roots.
First-year branches are almost hairless.
The young shoots are tinged with reddish brown.
The leaves are elliptic to obovate-elliptic, 4–8 cm long and 2.5–4 cm wide, with a pointed tip and a wedge-shaped base.
The leaf margin has triangular, pointed double serrations.
Both surfaces of the leaves have sparse hairs, which are dense on the veins of the underside in particular.
The petiole is 1–1.5 cm long and densely covered with ascending or spreading hairs.
The flowers open before the leaves unfold.
The flowers are borne 1–2 to an umbel arising from the leaf axils, and are pale pink with 5 petals.
The petals are elliptic, 1.3–1.5 cm long, with the tip shallowly divided into 2 lobes.
There are hairs at the base of the style.
The calyx tube is long and urn-shaped, and the sepal lobes are long triangular and almost entire.
There is almost no flower stalk, and the pedicels are 0.9–1.3 cm long and densely covered with spreading hairs.
The fruit is 7–8 mm in diameter and ripens to black-purple.
[History]
It was discovered in the Tama Hills in Tokyo and published in 2004.
[Notes]
The Japanese name comes from the fact that the 5 long triangular sepals look star-shaped.
