Cherry Blossoms Brighten Washington

By Rebecca Shokrian
National Geographic News

April 5, 2002

As 700,000 visitors flock to see 3,750 cherry blossom trees blooming at the height of their glory, Washington, D.C., is having one of the best Cherry Blossom Festivals in the 90-year history of the event, according to officials.

Cherry blossom trees were a gift to the United States from Japan in 1912 to symbolize the friendship between the two countries. Many of the original trees are still flourishing and giving pleasure to thousands of people.

Since the end of March, the Tidal Basin, near the Jefferson Memorial, and the grounds of the Washington Monument on the National Mall have been framed in clusters of white and pink blossoms that are the city's biggest spring tourist attraction every year.

Despite concerns about a hefty decline in D.C. tourism since last fall, the number of visitors to the National Cherry Blossom Festival this spring "is actually expected to exceed the 700,000 expectation" said Donna Sneyd, a spokesperson for the committee that organizes the annual event. "I think people are coming in an almost patriotic sense. They are showing that they won't let the fear of September 11th steer them away from their nation's capital."

Little-Known History

While the blossoms are renowned worldwide for their beauty, the history of their arrival in the United States is a mystery to most people.

The first cherry blossom trees—known as Sakura in Japanese—were sent to Washington in 1909 as a gift, but had to be destroyed because they were found to be infested with bugs and disease. Three years later the mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, sent a second batch, which grew to a stock of 3,020 trees representing 12 varieties.

On March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Taft and the wife of the Japanese ambassador, Viscountess Chinda, planted the first two donated cherry blossom trees on the northern bank of the Tidal Basin. Over the next seven years, others were planted around the Tidal Basin.

Today, two varieties dominate the display: the Yoshino cherry blossom (Prunus xyedoensis) and the Kwanzan cherry blossom (Prunus serrulata Kwanzan).

The first official commemoration of the cherry blossom tree donation did not occur until 15 years later, when Washingtonian schoolchildren reenacted the event of the first tree planting.

In 1982 the circle of friendship was complete when Japanese horticulturists arrived in the United States to collect approximately 800 cuttings from the Yoshino trees at the Tidal Basin. The cuttings were obtained to replace trees lost to flooding and to preserve the genetic characteristics of the native trees in Japan.

The Cherry Blossom Festival was first celebrated in 1935, when several civic groups sponsored it, laying the groundwork for the event that is still celebrated today.

The festival has become so large that in 1985, a not-for-profit organization—National Cherry Blossom Festival Inc.—was created to coordinate the event and promote participation. This year alone, the number of sponsors for the event doubled.

Members of the group are volunteers who represent Washington's civic, government, and business communities. Besides coordinating the festival, the group organizes seminars, museum exhibits, and other activities to educate the public about Japanese culture.

"The festival is great because it appeals to a broad range of people," said Sneyd. "There is something for everyone to enjoy. And for people with families, the low cost or no cost for most events keeps them coming back."

Keeping the Trees Healthy

Maintenance of the cherry blossom trees, like for any other plant, requires watering, fertilization, and pruning. Caring for the 3,750 trees has been a challenge for a government agency that has seen its budget shrink considerably over the past eight years.

The average life span of the trees is 50 to 60 years, "but if well taken care of [they] can last up to 100," which makes caring for them laborious, said Robert DeFeo, chief horticulturist of the National Park Service.

The Japanese cherry blossom trees in Washington are a monoculture—a single kind of organism grown in a specific area. This makes them more susceptible to the spread of diseases and insects. "Each year we lose between 50 and 100 trees, which are replaced by American commercial nurseries located within a 200-mile (300-kilometer) radius of Washington, D.C.," DeFeo said.

The cherry blossom trees are propagated from sapling cuttings, making them basically clones of one another. But, "even if you go to the same nursery for ten years you will get genetic diversity," DeFeo noted.

There is still one threat the trees are not immune from regardless of the hardiness and diversity of their gene pool: frost.

The National Park Service has no elaborate system in place to protect the blossoms in the event of sporadic freezing temperatures in Washington, according to DeFeo. "We would not be able to do anything to protect the blossoms," he said. Nonetheless, he pointed out, "We would never experience temperatures that would threaten the life of the tree, only the life of the blossoms.

"Years ago when there were warnings of frost," he added, "they used to put up the fan heaters like in citrus groves, but we don't currently have that technology."

One thing the National Park Service does to help ensure the trees' healthy survival is twice-yearly pruning. It takes a team of eight to ten people three months to complete the job. "Japan keeps calling us asking us what it is we do to maintain our trees because they look so much better than theirs. And it's just a matter of pruning," said DeFeo.

Only about 100 to 125 of the original cherry blossom trees—known as "witness trees"—are left today. Identifying which ones they are is virtually impossible because the records are sketchy, although documents indicate that nine of the original trees were transplanted onto the grounds of the Library of Congress and the Washington Aqueduct.

This year 69 trees propagated from those original specimens were planted in Washington to ensure that the genetic lineage survives.

Join the National Geographic Society, the world's largest nonprofit scientific and educational organization, and help further our mission to increase and diffuse knowledge of the world and all that is in it. Membership dues are used to fund exploration and educational projects and members also receive 12 annual issues of the Society's official journal, National Geographic. Click here for details of our latest subscription offer: Go>>