Did Japan's hallowed cherry trees actually originate in South Korea?

That is what is being claimed in the pages of Daily Sports, a South Korean newspaper. It reported: "The beloved somei yoshino variety of cherry tree isn't really from Japan, but actually from South Korea's Jeju Island.

"Japanese cherry trees are actually Jeju's royal cherry trees. The Japanese just took them and cultivated them."

Takeshi Kinoshita, a botany professor at Teikyo University in Tokyo, hit back.

Japan Times reported him as questioning why South Korea made similar claims almost every year when the trees came into bloom.

He writes on his website that no scholars believe somei yoshino trees originated on Jeju, and this is apparently a distorted interpretation. He explains that the variety was created by crossbreeding oshimazakura and edohigan cherry trees, and oshimazakura are not native to Jeju.

Meanwhile, experts in China have weighed into the debate, saying the variety was first found on Chinese soil.

He Zongru, chairman of the China Cherry Industry Association, said this has been recognized in a Japanese scholarly book that said cherry trees were first imported from the Himalaya Mountains in China during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).

Zhang Zuoshuang, an official at the Botanical Society of China, was quoted as saying that among the 150 types of cherry trees that grow in the wild around the world, more than 50 can be found in China.

Takeshi Kinoshita of the China Cherry Blossom Association said, "To put it simply, cherry trees originated in China and prospered in Japan. None of this is South Korea's business."

Xinhua