Spring Cherry

This is prunus subhirtella, known as Winter Flowering Cherry or Spring Cherry. It loves to flower before it has even developed leaves. It originates in Japan, though it was never wild, rather coming from generations of hybridisation. When I think of Japan, I imagine lightly pink flowering trees, neat and pretty. Its lack of ‘wildness’ set me athinking. Wild means uncultivated, untamed, undomesticated, uncontrolled. Of Ishmael, we read:

"He shall be a wild man;

His hand shall be against every man,

And every man’s hand against him.

And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” Gen. 16:12

‘Wild man’ or pere in the Hebrew, associated him with the donkey or wild ass, perhaps an allusion to his descendants’ nomadic lifestyles and later unwillingness to yield to Christ. To all wild men, asses and donkeys, He proclaims:

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:29-30

Although wilderness has its attractions, Christ’s re-cultivated Eden with its flowering shrubs and ripe fruit, has a gentle beauty which the untamed and incalcitrant will never see.