These photos were taken in Portsmouth, UK when there were a lot of cherry blossom trees in my library.
Sakura is also called “cherry blossom” in English. It is known as national flower of Japan. There are many kinds of sakura which are natural or created by cross-breeding to provide the most beautiful flower for people who want to enjoy seeing sakura. There are three main colours of sakura, red, pink and white. The duration of sakura’s life is 5 to 15 days, but the average time is 1 week.
In the UK, there are two places where have a lot of sakura namely Gloucestershire and Staffordshire. The national collection of sakura (as known as Japanese cherries blossom) is hold in Batsford Arboretum. In addition, the largest sakura villages is in Keele University in Staffordshire.
According to the information from the Internet, in the legend, sakura was developed from “sakuya” which was the name of goddess. She put the first seed of sakura in the Fuji mountain. Hence, she was known as goddess of sakura in Japan.
Now, sakura appears in many countries all over the world, such as US, UK, Vietnam, Canada, China… It was also in several novels of Japanese like Yama no otō of the author named Kawabata Yasunari
When I saw a lot of cherry blossom trees in Ravelin park, near Portsmouth library, I was surprised because I though it is only in Japan. I looked like a sky filled with sakura flower in pink colour. However, when I took photos, I wanted to focus on each flower as macro photos to emphasize the unique beauty of this kind of flower.
Photos were taken on March 2012
Anh Ho