Cherry Blossoms vs. Flowering Quince

In my apartment I have a very old Chinese silk painting of Cherry Blossoms.  It was a gift from my old professor of Asian Art History (I know… Asian Art History to wedding planning… Cherry Blossoms are probably the ONLY commonality between them) and as much as I love it, early on, when I moved into my current profession, it caused me a lot of confusion…. I would walk through the flower market CONVINCED that there were TWO kinds of cherry blossoms.  The delicate, dainty kind that I remembered from paintings and that seemed to be emblazoned on cakes and stationary AND the other pink, fluffy kind that one florist friend of ours referred to recently as “An EXPLOSION”.  It actually turns out that what I was looking at were two TOTALLY different kinds of branches- Flowering Quince and Cherry Blossoms.   Before you think I’m a total ninny- since I’ve seen pictures of the Cherry Blossom Festival since I was born and have been to the Bklyn Botanical Gardens festival several times, let me state my case.  Here is a Cherry Blossom.

And here is a flowering quince (which is not a tree, but actually a little bush!)

To my knowledge, not many people (if anyone) has ever told their baker or invitation designer “I really LOVE Flowering Quince. Can you use that as inspiration.” And yet, a lot of what we see out there resembles these delicate little branchy blossom a bit more than the fluffy pink explosion.  Here are two cases in point. Cherry Blossom wedding cakes:

And two “cherry blossom” invitations… One from Laura K Designs and the other from Paper and Ink Studios.

Gorgeous, all of them, but HARDLY capturing the “pink EXPLOSION” that is an actual cherry blossom.  I’m all for artistic license, but at the same time, I thought I’d take a moment to take a “hats off’ to some of the more accurate wedding representations of the flurry of fluffy cheer that is a fully bloomed cherry blossom (which, btw, also come in white… purdy!)  These are from Elum.

This cake is a design from Wendy Kromer.

And, so there you have it… My nonsensical rant about Cherry Blossoms and Flowering Quince.  The point? There isn’t one! I just wanted to give the Flowering Quince it’s proper recognition since I think it’s unintentionally inspired a lot of brides and vendors out there… including me!

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