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As you can see in the below picture, there's a branch with white-colored flowers, while the rest of the tree has pink flowers.

Picture

I googled a number of questions but it is a bit complicated to formulate in a search. Plus I have no background in botany or even biology.

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  • $\begingroup$ I edited your post. Feel free to roll back if you don't like my edits $\endgroup$
    – Remi.b
    Commented Apr 4, 2016 at 20:54

2 Answers 2

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Many ornamental cherries are grown on a hardier root stock, that is, they are propagated by grafting onto hardy wild cherry saplings. This is because the ornamental variety will not produce offspring that are true to the parents, if they produce offspring at all.

All are grafted plants and mainly on wild cherry (gean) rootstock. Such trees should be planted with the graft union above ground level. Seed, rarely produced, will give rise to new hybrids.

This is a picture of an ornamental cherry of the pompom variety:

enter image description here

My guess is that the tree in your picture sent a shoot off the main trunk under the graft site, resulting in a branch of native cherry, which is mostly white and a much simpler flower than the ornamental variety that was grafter onto it. Another possibility is that two different specimens were grafted onto the same stock (but since the white blossoms are very simple - like a wild cherry - I would guess the former occurred.)

This is a picture of a wild cherry (gean):

enter image description here

So you have the grafted ornamental cherry blooming alongside of the rootstock cherry it was grafted to.

The rootstock (although usually wild cherry) can vary, so... can't identify with certainty the rootstock, but can explain what you're seeing.

It's not rare, but it's not usually desirable. Some newer growers are grafting several varietues of cherries onto the same rootstock to intentionally produce a tree with different kinds and colors of flowers. See, for example, this artist's work.

The Hamada Cherries

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  • $\begingroup$ Wow! That's so intriguing. I suspected it to be a rootstock but I thought maybe there could be some other reason because that was on a small street where I live. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Rock Ninja
    Commented Apr 5, 2016 at 2:00
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There is a bougainvillea variety called 'Surprise', which puts out bracts either white or magenta in color, though I believe all of the actual flowers are white.

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  • $\begingroup$ So, how does this point answer the question, even without a reference? $\endgroup$ Commented May 20, 2016 at 3:58

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