Home»All Photographs»Flora & Fauna (Flowers & Wildlife)»Cherry Blossoms - Washington, DC - 2010

This is a collection of the Cherry Blossoms taken at the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC in April 2010.

A major activity and event to look forward to every year is the annual blooming of the cherry blossom trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC. The trees usually bloom in late March to early April. This year the "peak bloom" was April 2nd to 4th.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a spring celebration commemorating the March 27, 1912, gift of Japanese cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to the city of Washington. Mayor Ozaki donated the trees in an effort to enhance the growing friendship between the United States and Japan and also celebrate the continued close relationship between the two nations. In a ceremony on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two of these trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park. By 1915 the United States government had responded with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan. Suspended during World War II because of hostilities between the United States and the Empire of Japan, the festival resumed in 1947.

3,800 more trees were accepted in 1965 by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. In 1981 the cycle of giving came full circle. Japanese horticulturalists came to take cuttings from the trees in Washington, D.C. to replace Yoshino cherry trees in Japan that had been destroyed in a flood. With this return gift, the trees again fulfilled their roles as a symbol and agent of friendship. The most recent event in this cycle occurred in the fall of 1999. It involved the formal planting in the Tidal Basin of a new generation of cuttings from a famous Japanese cherry tree in Gifu Prefecture reputed to be over 1,500 years old.