At the end of winter, when the plants are still sleeping, ume trees bloom ahead of other plants. Here in Wakayama, many people make ume (plum) wine and umeboshi (pickled plums) at home, and ume trees are a blessing to our daily lives. As the Japanese proverb says, “ A fool never cuts an ume tree” it is easier to produce flowers and fruit if long branches are pruned properly. When we milled the lumber from the plum trees that felled in the typhoon, we found that the lumber was quite hard and had a distinctive reddish color.