Ibi Nido-zakura (the Ibi Twice-Blooming Cherry)

This cherry flowers twice without finishing the first flowering. Single blooms open, and as their petals begin to wilt a second flush of buds opens at the centre of the same flower, doubled this time. The habit gave the tree its name, nido-zakura, the twice-blooming cherry, and won it National Natural Monument status on 7 March 1923. What stands in the park today has survived two deaths. The original grew at Daizo-ji temple with a trunk about three metres round, and a storm brought it down in 1833. A second tree rose from that stump, reached about 1.8 metres round, and died in 1934. Everything flowering here now is shoots off the same root system, which outlived both trunks. In 2009 three of those shoots were added to the 1923 designation, so four trees carry it between them. Nobody has published an age for the present growth. A figure repeated widely online gives the trunk as 160 centimetres round, eight metres tall and roughly 140 years old, but it appears in no official register, and we would rather say that than quote it as fact. If you know of a dated measurement, tell us. The town of Ono built the park around the four designated trees in 2012 and has since planted 86 more cherries beside them, every one raised from cuttings off the originals. The rarity is being propagated rather than merely fenced.