Request: Cherry blossoms in Kugane!

[Naraku_Diabolos]

You're welcome! I hope that we do get to have a chance to get azalea bushes for our housing areas! All that the development team has to do is take a regular green bush and just add different colored flowers to it. It would make the areas more colorful than just a green bush.

[Balipu]

As someone obsessed with japanese culture I give my full support for this idea.

[Lilseph]

Yeah, it would give it more identity and it would be better for hanging out. I remember during the Xmas event, we had snow in the residential areas. I had some cherry blossom trees that, combined with the snow (which looked like sakura leaves), it gave me a super magical feel ; ;

[TouchandFeel]

/end educational rant, lol

While technically possible to create a "perpetually blooming" variety of something like a cherry tree (or apple, plum, peach, etc.), it would require require the proper climate with the correct conditions to keep it in the state of the tree/plant thinking it is okay to bloom. This would likely be a very warm/temperate climate that stays fairly consistent throughout the year, since seasonal shifts would potentially disrupt what life-cycle phase (dormant, grow, fruit/flow) that the plant thinks it is in.
On top of that, I would predict that a "perpetually blooming" cherry tree would look noticeably different than what we think of when we think of a blooming cherry tree since the tree dominated by and completely covered in blooms with little to no leaves is a result of the tree going into a very concentrated flowering phase after coming out of winter dormancy. If the tree were to be perpetually blooming, it would likely have far fewer blossoms at any one time and they would be mixed in with the basic leaf and branch growth since the flowering period would be stretched over a longer time and would overlap with the growth period. It would also probably end up being a very slow growing or dwarf variety due to more energy and resources being devoted into flowering during it's growth period.

Honestly though, in a fictional video game world with magic and other such things, just go with the default justification ... "a wizard did it".

For those interested, here is a great episode of the NHK International show Begin Japanology that focuses on Sakura.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwX5AkeXeX0

[Squintina]

I don't know about having it all year round, but there are concepts of months in Eorzea (even if time does go by a lot faster than Earth time). They could still make it seasonal to Eorzea time.

1 year Eorzea = 18 earth days. So even if they did a "spring" thing (3 Eorzean months), that means we'd get about 4 earth days of blossoms every and then 14 days of no blossoms.

So even without some magical always blooming tree, they could still do a seasonal tree that we get to see somewhat often.

[Iscah]

Keeping track of intended time in the story is so hard already; I think it would be worse if you could actually see a cycle of seasons implying that years were apparently passing. Better to keep it vague, and not make it look like my character just spent several years pursuing crafting hobbies while the world was waiting to be saved....

(Going through Heavensward currently, and there are a few points where dialogue indicates that a few days have passed since the thing you did one real-world hour ago with no apparent break for your character.)

[basketofseals]

Are there even cherry blossom trees in Kugane? Also despite the Japanese name, doesn't the local culture make the city out to be more like Hong Kong than anything Japanese?

[Squintina]

Keeping track of intended time in the story is so hard already; I think it would be worse if you could actually see a cycle of seasons implying that years were apparently passing. Better to keep it vague, and not make it look like my character just spent several years pursuing crafting hobbies while the world was waiting to be saved....

(Going through Heavensward currently, and there are a few points where dialogue indicates that a few days have passed since the thing you did one real-world hour ago with no apparent break for your character.)

It's not like most people would know that it's because a year passed - only those who actually learn and case about Eorzea time (In which case those people already know that they spend X years farming for Y instead of saving the world ).
To most people it'll just look like every couple of weeks the blossoms bloom, which I think would be nice for them to not be in bloom all the time.

[Aivi_lo]

It sounds magical I'd love there to be cherry blossom groves

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Yeah, it would give it more identity and it would be better for hanging out. I remember during the Xmas event, we had snow in the residential areas. I had some cherry blossom trees that, combined with the snow (which looked like sakura leaves), it gave me a super magical feel ; ;

If Ishgard ever has personal housing, I wish that they would have pine trees that had snow on them. They could have the area near a big lake somewhere off in Coerthas, but this area in Coerthas could have less snow and be a milder climate. However, there could be occasional snowfall in that residential area, but nowhere near blizzard conditions like Central Highlands. It would be neat that if the area was just cold enough that it had snow sculptures and icicles hanging from the roofs of houses. You wouldn't have to craft the icicles, but they could naturally form whenever it would snow. And when it does snow over a period of time, a light dusting would form on the ground. Then when the sun comes out over a period of time, the snow fades. That would be cool!