This week its starting to warm up, all the beautiful spring flowers such as daffodils are starting to bloom and people are now expecting the usual April showers. So I thought its about time for a short story on the wonderful spring time Cherry Blossom flower.
The Cherry Blossom is a flower that blooms on a number of different trees where the most commonly known breed is the “Yoshino cherry”. This tree grows naturally in Japan and is now the most commonly planted breed of Cherry Blossom Trees across the world. The Cherry Blossom is a beautiful sight of spring but there are sadly very few in the UK. However, surprisingly there are loads in the United States of America. Why? I hear you ask…
It Seems in 1910 the Japanese gave 2000 Cherry Blossom trees as a gift to the United States to celebrate the countries growing relationship. Sadly they were all destroyed due to disease but the friendly Japanese came to the rescue in 1912 with 3020 replacement Cherry Blossom Trees. Then in 1965 the lucky Americans received another gift from the Japanese of 3800 Cherry Blossom Trees.
It turns out that America now has one of the largest collections of Cherry Blossom trees in a park called “Branch Brook Park” in Newark, New Jersey. Here the park is home to about 4300 cherry blossom trees. We would recommend to anyone who can afford to get to the United States and visit that park at this time of year then that surely would be a most fantastic experience.
That isn’t the end of it though, the Americans still have more! “Branch Brook Park” in Newark is just the most trees in one single enclosed location. It turns out that in “Macon, Georgia”, every Spring since 1982 they have celebrated a festival called “The International Cherry Blossom Festival”. Macon is now known as the Cherry Blossom capital of the world due to their staggering 300,000 (Yes 300 thousand, that’s not a typo) cherry blossom trees that are scattered around the college campuses in town. To think all of these trees came from just 500 that were planted around the community in 1973.
