The protector of cherry trees

IN the past 20 years, a new race of Japanese flowering cherries has arrived in the West. It comes from Hokkaido in northern Japan, where winters are as cold (or colder) than they are in Britain. The trees were selected and named by a Japanese schoolteacher named Masatoshi Asari. They are now known as the Matsumae cherries.

Mr Asari was one of several custodians of a conservation collection of historic flowering cherries planted in Matsumae Park in the town of the same name in 1961. Mr Asari’s childhood was overshadowed by the Second