April 21, 2020
Journal Post #1.
It's been colder than I would expect for April in the Northeast, which I think helps the flowers hang on a bit longer than usual (I think I read that somewhere). There are a lot of varied azalea bushes (Rhododendron subg. Hymenanthes) in my front yard which are just about to bloom - I will try to identify the subspecies in the next week I think. The cherry blossom tree in the back is already in bloom (Prunus subhirtella, although there are also many Prunus serrulata) in the neighborhood. From a light skim of Kim et al. 2014 article in the American Journal of Botany, Korean researchers found the morphological origin of flowering cherry trees to be a hybrid species originating fro Jeju via ribotype analysis. Jeju is a tiny island off the southern coast of Korea and it's pretty popular for tourism. Ribotyping is an interesting technique of RNA categorization and I will also try to read more on this later today.
