Okame Japanese Cherry Blossom Trees

Okame Japanese Cherry Blossom Trees

Prunus Okame Cherry trees flower early, with red and pink blossom in March: after Accolade and before most other flowering cherries. The single, radiant pink blooms with purple-red centres cover the tree before its leaves appear. In autumn, the leaves turn into a warm range of colours, from peachy yellow to flushed red.

Okame is a short, bushy specimen tree that tends to branch low down. It can reach a height of about 5-10 metres. Very upright when young, it becomes quite round with maturity.

Browse our variety of cherry blossom trees or our full range of garden trees.

Delivery season: Cherry blossom trees are delivered bareroot during late autumn and winter, approximately November-March inclusive.
Choosing a size: Small trees are cheaper, easier to handle and more forgiving of less than ideal aftercare, so they're best for a big planting project. If instant impact is your priority, or if you are only buying a few plants for use in a place where it's convenient to water them well in their first year, then you may as well use bigger ones. All our bareroot trees are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Features

• Height: To 5-10m
• Soil: Any decently well drained
• Use: Specimen, small garden, urban
• Colour: Red and pink blossom in March
• RHS Award of Garden Merit
• Bareroot delivery only: November-March
  

Growing Okame Cherry Trees

Suitable for any well drained soil, we recommend planting in full sun.

History & Trivia

Captain Collingwood Ingram, the great champion of ornamental cherry trees in Britain, bred this hybrid variety from Prunus campanulata and Prunus incisa. It has won both the Award of Garden Merit and an award for its cut flowers from the RHS.

We haven't verified this 100%, but it seems that Okame literally means tortoise, and refers to a chubby, smiling Japanese woman who would bring you luck in marriage. Her face is recreated in a party game called Fukuwarai, traditionally played together by adults and children on New Year's Eve.

Standard trees are measured by their girth in centimetres 1 metre above ground level: their trunk's waist measurement. Unlike sapling trees and hedge plants, standards aren't measured by their height, which will vary quite a bit both between and within species.
So, a 6/8cm standard tree has a trunk with a circumference of 6-8cm and an 8/10 standard has a trunk 8-10cm around. This measurement makes no difference to the tree's final height.
On average, standard trees are 2-3.5 metres tall when they arrive, but we cannot tell you precisely how tall your trees will be before we deliver them.