Prunus campanulata Maxim.

A deciduous cherry tree up to 30 ft high, of graceful habit, free from down in all its parts; year-old shoots freely marked with warts. Leaves ovate, oval or slightly obovate, slender-pointed, broadly wedge-shaped to slightly heart-shaped at the base, margins regularly set with fine forward-pointing or incurved teeth, 21⁄2 to 4 in. long, 1 to 13⁄4 in. wide, nerves in six to eight pairs; stalks 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in. long. Flowers 3⁄4 in. wide, produced in March and April, two to six together on main-stalks 1 to 11⁄2 in. long that bear usually a couple of leaf-like bracts; individual flower-stalks 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in. long. Petals of a beautiful deep rose, roundish ovate, notched at the apex, 1⁄4 in. wide. Calyx-tube rose-coloured except at the base, the reflexed, sparsely toothed lobes also rosy; stamens deep rose, anthers yellow. Fruits described as red, conical, 5⁄8 in. long, scarcely 1⁄2 in. wide. Bot. Mag., t. 9575.

Native of Formosa and S. China and thought to be wild also in the Ryukyu Islands. The bell shape of the flowers to which the specific name refers seems to be characteristic of them in a young state only. It appears to have been introduced by Messrs Sander of St Albans in 1899, but owing to its tenderness was lost and not seen again until Wilson took plants from Japan to the Arnold Arboretum in 1915. Its flowers are, perhaps, the most highly coloured of all the genuinely wild types. Near London it needs the protection of a wall, but succeeds in the open ground in the mildest parts. At Kew it flowers freely in the Temperate House in March or even earlier. Award of Merit 1935.