Century-old cherry trees bust a bloom

Steve Hendrix’s story in The Washington Post eloquently describes the original “geezer” cherry trees about to “bust a bloom” in Washington, D.C. You’ll love the photos, too. Below is an excerpt from the article:

In human years, they are 156 years old. And it shows.

You’ll seldom find a more gnarled, knobbed or bent-over bunch of geezer trees than these ancient Yoshino cherries lining a short stretch of the Tidal Basin. It’s an orchard of gnomes and trolls, a grove of exhausted old-timers boasting all the upright rigor of melted candles.

And yet, stand back. The “originals” are about to bust a bloom. For the 100th spring in a row, it’s showtime for the survivors of the first 3,000 Japanese cherry trees planted here a century ago this month.

The number of alums from the Class of 1912 is down to a few dozen, most of them bunched in this little forest of the wizened next to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. They are living relics of history’s greatest diplo-botanical goodwill gesture, and they’ve borne a century of witness to a transformation they helped to spark: the emergence of Washington as not just a powerful city but a beautiful one.

Read all of the story and see amazing photos on The Washington Post’s web site.

If you live in the Northwest and have a flowering cherry, learn what you can do when your tree needs you on Collier Arbor Care‘s web site.