Satsuki Azalea ID

Hi everyone. My first post. I purchased a Satsuki Azalea last winter under the variety "hatsu kansetsu" meaning "first snow on the mountain top." It's supposedly an old and cold-tolerant mountain variety.

Since I can't seen to find any info on the said variety and seeing the tree in bloom for the first time this year, it looks more like a "miyama mangetsu" as flowers and leaves are very small.

Can anyone ID and/or confirm? Many thanks

hozookie said:

Hi everyone. My first post. I purchased a Satsuki Azalea last winter under the variety "hatsu kansetsu" meaning "first snow on the mountain top." It's supposedly an old and cold-tolerant mountain variety.

Since I can't seen to find any info on the said variety and seeing the tree in bloom for the first time this year, it looks more like a "miyama mangetsu" as flowers and leaves are very small.

Can anyone ID and/or confirm? Many thanks

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View attachment 35412

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I believe you are right you have miyama mangetsu. Hatsu Kansetsu is one of the rarer varieties its not even pictured in any of the japanese satsuki/kurume dictionairies i own. I imported one back when it was easy to bring trees from Japan more then 10 years ago. Half of my tree died off over the years and now it's a small shohin with a chunky hollow trunk. It is a lighter pink in fact mine will be blooming in the next few days and I will definitely take a picture of the flower for you. Here is a picture of miyama mangetsu from a Japanese satsuki/kurume dictionary. This year I only let one flower bloom since I'm giving my tree a break. BUT one flower on hatsu-Kansetsu is actually 3! They appear a giant bud the bud flakes like a piece of popcorn and from each bud 3 flowers explode. The shell on my only bud I let develop this year just opened here is a picture of that cluster as well, I should have fully open flowers in a few days.

Here's my Hatsu Kansetsu with 2 of the 3 flowers from the cluster opened.

Thanks for the photos and ID. It seems like the color variation are quite different and miyama mangetsu has a much more distinctive/sharp line between the colors.

I prefer the color subtleties and prefer the hatsu kansetsu.

Then again, older photos (before I got the tree) of the flower do show flower color variations similar to hatsu kansetsu.

I'm not letting the tree flower this year, but time will tell.

Thanks again for the responses.

hozookie said:

Then again, older photos (before I got the tree) of the flower do show flower color variations similar to hatsu kansetsu.

I'm not letting the tree flower this year, but time will tell.

Thanks again for the responses.

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Whatever it is it's a nice satsuki.

This is Hatsu Kansetsu just after flowering. Chuck asked for a picture and this poor quality image was all I had. Not the optimal time to repot just after flowering but had to do it.

http://bonsainut.com/forums/showthread.php?14724-Chuck-Iker-Pot&highlight=chuck+iker