Washington’s Cherry Trees -
A National Institution

Synonymous with springtime, Washington’s cherry trees symbolize international friendship.

Written by Carole Ottesen

The subject of countless postcards, cherry trees in full bloom around the Tidal Basin have become a symbol of our nation’s capital.

Along with the Washington Monument and the Capitol, the fringe of flowering cherry trees around the Tidal Basin has become a Washington icon. Yet, there was a time when flowering cherry trees were wildly exotic and the Tidal Basin was bereft of any trees at all. Had it not been for the efforts of some prominent Washingtonians and the grace of some generous Japanese, the Cherry Blossom Festival, now a national rite of spring, might never have come into being.

Mrs. Eliza Scidmore, a travel writer and photographer, visited Japan in 1855, only a year after Commodore Matthew Perry “opened” that country. On subsequent trips to Japan, her love for “the Island Empire” deepened, especially for the Japanese national flower, the cherry blossom. Upon her return to Washington, Scidmore began a long, but unsuccessful campaign to embellish the nation’s capital with flowering cherries, petitioning each new Superintendent of Public Building and Grounds with her proposal to plant a field of cherries in Potomac Park. 1902 found her still campaigning for the planting of her beloved trees.

That same year, David Fairchild, plant explorer and the first Director of the Office of Plant Introduction in the United States, visited Japan. Taken with the beauty of the flowering cherries, he, too, longed to plant them in Washington and in 1906 Fairchild and his wife Marian, daughter of Alexander Graham Bell, finally got the opportunity. They bought a property where they nurtured their own sakura-no or field of cherries. Delighted that their trees flourished in the Washington area, they began to promote them as street trees.

Fairchild arranged that “a boy from each school in the District of Columbia...get a tree for his school yard” in observance of Arbor Day, 1908. He wanted to plant the “Speedway” (now Independence Avenue, SW in West Potomac Park) with flowering cherries and joined forces with Scidmore, who was raising money herself to purchase cherry trees for the city.

Scidmore sent a note to the new First Lady Helen Herron Taft detailing her plan to finance the trees privately. Expecting no reply, Scidmore was thrilled to find her long crusade adopted by Taft. In a letter dated April 7, 1909, the First Lady wrote: “Šperhaps it would be best to make an avenue of them” rather than the sakura-no suggested by both Scidmore and Fairchild.

The First Lady’s plan for an avenue of flowering cherries inspired the famous Japanese chemist Dr. Jokichi Takamine, the discoverer of adrenaline, to donate 2,000 additional trees in the name of the city of Tokyo. The following December, trees that had arrived in Seattle from Japan were shipped across country in refrigerated railroad cars. When they arrived in Washington, all hell broke loose.

“The crates arrived January 7, 1910, and...almost every sort of pest imaginable was discovered,” wrote Fairchild, adding, “Ghastly as it seems, the trees were all burned.”

What might have been a terrible diplomatic muddle was addressed with grace and goodwill by the Japanese. Two years later, Dr. Takamine footed the bill for another 3,020 trees.

The second generous gift of trees arrived on February 14, 1912. Upon inspection, the Chief of the Bureau of Entomology declared, “No shipment could have been cleaner and freer from insect pests.”

A month after the arrival of the second shipment, First Lady Taft and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese Ambassador, planted two Yoshino cherry trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin, not far from the statue of John Paul Jones. Few attended that ceremony, but today, during the National Cherry Blossom Festival, an estimated one million attendees pass near the foot of those two trees where bronze plates commemorate that occasion.