Cherry blossoms x Yamabuki

I love cherry blossoms. But for the purpose of photographs, I actively seek to photograph them in combination with something else. Unless it is a sakura tunnel or sakasazakura (cherry blossoms reflected in water), there's only so many photos of just cherry blossoms that I want to post on social media.

So a few years ago I started to collect photos of sakura in combination with other things, often other flowers, as in this post. In this photo you can see a cherry blossom tree with yamabuki. Yamabuki is sometimes called 'yellow rose' in English, as the genus is in the rose family. However, they don't look much like roses at all. The official name for them in English is Kerria Japonica after William Kerr who introduced them to the West.

Yamabuki are a beautiful vivid yellow flower. There are two different types. The one in this photo is a pleniflora. They typically bloom from mid to late April. It is rare to be able to see the somei yoshino variety of cherry blossom, which is the type in this photo, flowering when the yamabuki are flowering, so I was thrilled this year to be able to add this combination to my collection!