Rite of Spring: The National Cherry Blossom Festival

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Have your clients visited the nation’s capitol recently? If so, they’re likely to be asking for a new cherry tree or two for their landscapes this spring. With the National Cherry Blossom Festival officially running from March 26 through April 10, hundreds of thousands of visitors to Washington took in the sights of nearly 4,000 cherry trees in bloom around D.C.’s tidal basin and nearby monuments. The trees are likely to remain so through April 18, barring any heavy rain or winds.

The famous trees were a gift from Japan in 1912 to the city of Washington from Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki. The gift was meant to enhance the growing friendship between the United States and Japan and celebrate the continued close relationship between the two countries. According to history, the United States responded with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan in 1915, but the first cherry blossom festival was held in 1935, sponsored by civic groups in the nation's capital.

Since it’s inception, the National Cherry Blossom Festival has grown to include exhibits and events that commemorate Japanese culture and celebrate America. Everything from aikido demonstrations and kimono exhibits to Cherry Blossom Princesses and a rugby tournament were on the calendar for the festival, but the trees were the main focus.

According to the National Park Service, the earliest blooming date for the blossoms was March 15 in 1990 and the latest was April 18 in 1958. The average blooming date – the time when the blooms are considered to reach their peak – is April 5 for the Yoshino cherry trees and April 22 for the double-flowering Kwanzan trees.

Landscape contractors may want to keep those particular varieties in mind for their clients, as the Yoshino (Prunus x yedoensis) and Kwanzan (Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan') are the most popular around the tidal basin and nearby Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. Here’s a little more about each variety from the National Park Service:

Yoshino Cherry:  (Prunus x yedoensis) The Yoshino cherry is the predominant variety that encircles the Tidal Basin and spills north onto the Washington Monument grounds. The Yoshino cherries produce a great profusion of single white blossoms that, en mass, create the effect of white clouds banked around the basin. The Yoshino cherry, known as Somei-yoshino in Japan, is a hybrid of unknown origin that was first introduced in Tokyo in 1872 and is now one of the most popular cultivated flowering cherries.

Mingled with the Yoshino trees are a small number of the Akebono cherries, a mutation of the Yoshino cherry with single, pale-pink blossoms introduced into cultivation by W.B. Clarke of California in 1920. The Akebono cherry flowers at the same time as the Yoshino cherry and provides an attractive tint of pink in the early stages of the peak bloom.

Yoshino cherries are round-topped and wide-spreading, reaching 30 to 50 feet at maturity. The white, single, five-petal flowers blossom in clusters of two to five and have an almond scent.

Kwanzan Cherry: (Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan') Named after a mountain in Japan, the Kwanzan Cherry is primarily growing in East Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. Coming into bloom two weeks later than the Yoshino, the upright Kwanzan branches bear heavy clusters of clear pink double blossoms. The cultivars Fugenzo (double, rosy pink flowers) and Shirofugen (double, white when open but aging to pink) are also represented. Fugenzo is the cultivar Mrs. William Howard Taft believed she planted even before she officially planted the first tree from Japan in 1912. They were planted along the Potomac River from the present site of the Lincoln Memorial south toward East Potomac Park, but gradually disappeared.

Kwanzan cherries have an upright habit and spread to 30 feet with a rounded crown and stiff ascending branches. This variety is often wider than it is tall at maturity. The double flowers have about 30 petals and bloom in clusters of three to five, sometimes more. They are up to 2½ inches across with many petaloid stamens often parly concealing the two green leafy carpels which protrude from the center of the flower.