The handkerchief tree ( Davidia involucrata var. Vilmoriniana ) whose Bracts are in full spectacular full bloom at the Cambridg
The handkerchief tree ( Davidia involucrata var. Vilmoriniana ) whose Bracts are in full spectacular full bloom at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden,Cambridge, Britain,UK. Please credit the garden name in full please. The pair of Handkerchief Trees (/Davidia involucrata/) in the Woodland Garden have put on a spectacular show helped by the heavy rain of last year and by being 're booted' by the cold period of this year. The two large, unequal, conspicuous bright-white bracts cup a sphere of tiny, reddish flowers, and unfurl to flutter in the slightest breeze. The arrangement of the flowers in ranks along the spreading branches can resemble a flock of white doves, giving another common name, Dove Tree. The genus is named after Father Armand David, known as Père David, a French Franciscan missionary in China, who first described the tree in 1869. He was also the first European to describe another rare Chinese endemic, the Giant Panda (/Ailuropoda melanoleuca/). It was, however, Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson who first introduced the Handkerchief Tree to the UK in 1904, while plant-hunting through China on the commission of the famous London nursery, James Veitch & Sons
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Photo credit: © BRIAN HARRIS / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: botanic, cambridge, davidia, garden, handkerchief, involucrata, tree, vilmoriniana
