Japanese people fever with cherry trees

A mysterious cherry blossom tree is causing the Japanese to "fever", which has attracted the attention of both monks and scientists.

This cherry tree was grown from a cherry seed that circled around Earth's orbit for 9 months, after which the flower of this cherry blossom bloomed many years earlier than expected, with other strange petals. with regular cherry blossoms.

According to AFP, the cherry tree is only four years old. It has grown from a cherry seed taken to the International Space Station (ISS) and blooms in the last 1/4 day, six years ahead of the natural cycle.

The early flowering of this plant in the garden of an ancient monastery in Central Japan, has made the Buddhist monks here very surprised.

"We were surprised to see the tree grow so fast. It replaces the mother cherry tree, which is said to be 1,250 years old," said Masahiro Kajita, the monk in charge of managing Ganjoji temple in Gifu .

The magic seed is among 265 cherry seeds harvested from the "Chujo-hime-seigan-zakura" tree . This is part of a seed harvest project of cherry trees grown in 14 locations across Japan.

Cherry tree with petals is very different.(Source: AFP)

Cherry seeds were sent to ISS in November 2008 and returned to Earth in July the following year with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, after circling the Earth 4,100 times.

Some cherries have been taken to laboratories for research. But most of the other seeds were transferred back to where people harvested them. The miracle seed was planted in the nursery near Ganjoji Temple.

By April this year, "cosmic cherry tree" came from seeds that were up to 4m tall and suddenly hatched 9 flowers. Each flower has only 5 wings, very special compared to the flowers with 30 wings in the mother tree.

It usually takes 10 years for the cherry tree to bloom the first flowers.

The impact of cosmic rays?

It is an educational and cultural project that encourages children to harvest cherry seeds and find out how people have grown seeds into trees, after the seeds are brought back from the universe, Miho. Tomioka, a spokesman for the organization that led the project, is Japan Manned Space Systems (JAMSS).

Cherry seeds are brought to space.(Source: SMCP)

"We were hoping that those cherry trees blossomed in about 10 years after being planted, it was also the time when the children grew up," she said.

Kaori Tomita-Yokotani, a researcher at Tsukuba University, who participated in the project, told AFP that she was also surprised by the mystery surrounding the cherry tree."We still cannot rule out the possibility that this seed has suffered from certain environmental impacts , " she said.

Tomita-Yokotani, a plant expert, said it was difficult to explain why the cherry tree grew so fast, because people do not have the corresponding tree groups to compare the growth rate.

She said that crossbreeding with other plants could make the cherry tree grow rapidly. However, the lack of research data makes it difficult for scientists to give a satisfactory answer.

"Obviously there is still the possibility that strong cosmic ray exposure has accelerated the process of germination and overall growth of the tree. From a scientific point of view, we can only say that it is completely unknown why the phenomenon This happened again , " she said.