Collingwood Ingram was an English plantsman and ornithologist who reintroduced Japan’s lost Taihaku cherry in the early 20th century. He recognized the cultivar from a historic Japanese illustration, realized a matching tree survived in England, propagated it, and sent living scions back to Japan, where the Taihaku was restored. This is why he is often called Cherry Ingram.
Who was Collingwood Ingram?
Collingwood Ingram (1880–1981) was a British naturalist best known for his life’s work with Japanese flowering cherries. Trained as an ornithologist, he became a leading authority on ornamental cherries, amassing a major collection at his garden in Benenden, Kent, and corresponding with Japanese botanists and nurserymen. He is profiled widely, including on Wikipedia and in Naoko Abe’s book Cherry Ingram, which details how his collecting and breeding helped conserve diverse cherry cultivars.
Ingram’s nickname, Cherry Ingram, reflects his decades-long effort to document, breed, and preserve Japanese sakura cultivars at a time when many were disappearing in their homeland.
Beyond preservation, he bred new cherries for gardens, including the early-flowering hybrid Prunus ‘Okame’, widely planted today by city foresters and home gardeners.
What is the Taihaku cherry?
Taihaku, often called the Great White Cherry and written as Prunus ‘Taihaku’, is a Japanese ornamental cherry noted for very large single white blossoms and a broad, elegant habit. The flowers can reach about 5 centimeters across and bloom with coppery young foliage that turns green as the season progresses. Horticultural references like the Royal Horticultural Society describe it as one of the showiest single-flowered cherries for parks and large gardens.
Prunus ‘Taihaku’ is prized for single, pure white flowers up to about 5 cm across, giving trees a striking, snow-white spring display.
How did Ingram reintroduce the Taihaku cherry to Japan?
On a 1926 visit to Japan, Ingram was shown a historical illustration of a large white cherry that Japanese experts said no longer existed in the country. He recognized the blossom form as matching a rare tree he had seen in England. Back in Kent, he located that English specimen, took scions, and grafted healthy young plants.
He then sent living scions to collaborators in Japan, where they were grafted onto compatible rootstocks and grown on for parks and temple grounds. Several accounts, including Smithsonian Magazine and The Guardian, date the successful return to the early 1930s.
In the early 1930s, Ingram shipped scions of Prunus ‘Taihaku’ from England to Japan, restoring a cultivar that had disappeared there.
In practical terms, this was a conservation-by-cultivation success. He used standard horticultural techniques, especially grafting, to clone the English-held tree, then repatriated that living genetic material to Japan. The modern Taihaku trees you see in Japan and abroad trace to those clonal grafts.
Was the Taihaku cherry really extinct?
It was not globally extinct as a species. Taihaku is a named ornamental cultivar, which is a cultivated clone. It had become extirpated in Japan, meaning it disappeared there, but a clone survived in the United Kingdom. Ingram’s achievement was to identify the match and restore the cultivar to its country of origin.
This distinction matters. The genus Prunus includes many species and cultivars. A cultivar can vanish in one region yet persist elsewhere in gardens. Ingram’s work shows how botanical collections outside a plant’s native range can serve as a genetic safety net when responsibly managed and exchanged.
What is the difference between Taihaku and Somei Yoshino?
People often compare Taihaku to Somei Yoshino (Prunus × yedoensis ‘Somei-yoshino’), the pale pink cultivar planted en masse in Tokyo and Washington, DC. They are different cherries.
- Blossom size and color: Taihaku has larger, pure white single flowers. Somei Yoshino has slightly smaller, pale pink to nearly white blossoms.
- Origin: Taihaku is an old Japanese cultivar that was lost in Japan and restored. Somei Yoshino is a 19th century hybrid selected in Edo-period nurseries.
- Where you see them: Washington, DC’s cherries are mostly Somei Yoshino, as noted by the U.S. National Park Service. Taihaku is common in parks and collections but is less often mass-planted.
Why does Collingwood Ingram’s work matter?
Ingram’s Taihaku story is a case study in cultural and horticultural conservation. He helped Japan recover a lost living tradition, and he championed diversity in cherry plantings at a time when a single cultivar was becoming dominant. He also introduced and bred robust cherries for wider climates, such as Prunus ‘Okame’, broadening the palette for urban forestry.
There is a caveat. Not all plant moving is benign. Some introductions become invasive. Ingram’s Taihaku repatriation was the return of a Japanese cultivar to Japan using clean, clonal material, coordinated with local experts. It is a model for ethical, documented exchange among botanic gardens and specialists.
For more on the history and impact, see Smithsonian Magazine and Naoko Abe’s book, which expands on his travels, his Benenden collection, and the network that made the Taihaku comeback possible.