Chris Lane – Cherry Time of Year
Our AGM guest speaker , Chris Lane, had a busy day on Saturday 12 April! As a Trustee of Brogdale Trust, he was supporting the annual Hanami festival at Brogdale in the morning and joined us for our AGM in the afternoon.
Chris chose the subject of cherries, as it is Spring flowering season and he holds the national collection of flowering cherries – 450 of them!
Chris briefly recalled the history of sweet cherry growing in Kent, triggered by King Henry VIII, which early in the 20th century covered 9000 acres between Rainham and Faversham. The traditional cherry trees were tall, open to the elements and the fruit was picked from ladders (“cherry pickers”) which had to be very long – up to 45ft and could only be moved by two people. Sheep were often grazed under the trees. Chris’s family were involved in the cherry farming business, and so Chris was introduced to this world very early.
Chris then introduced Collingwood Ingram, a British ornithologist and plant collector who lived much of his life in Kent and became a world-wide authority on Japanese flowering cherries. He grew 73 cherry varieties at his house in Benenden, and personally raised / bred 8 different varieties.
Japanese culture reveres flowering cherries and has cultivated them since at 9th century; the trees can grow very old in the Japanese environment – 600 years or more; in the UK it is rare that a tree grows older than 100 years.
In 1926 he was invited, as an expert on Japanese cherries, to visit Japan and was shown a picture of a beautiful white cherry, thought to be extinct in Japan; this he recognised as a tree growing in a Sussex garden. He took cuttings and was able to share these – by transporting the cuttings inserted into a potato to avoid drying out while they travelled by train to Japan.
This variety – the Taihaku – was successfully reintroduced to Japan, and is now planted in every temperate environment across the world.
Chris showed many beautiful photos of a range of flowering cherries, illustrating the different shares of pink, white and the single and complex blossoms – a joy to behold!