Her thousands of Japanese cherry trees american capital they reached their peak when the National Mall was immersed in a phantasmagoria of pink and white flowers.

Predicting the flowering time, defined as the moment when 70% of the buds “pop”, is becoming increasingly difficult. In the 1920s, the average flowering peak was on April 5th. In recent years, that date has been pushed back to March 31, according to the National Park Service, but this year the peak came a week early.

“I have a feeling this is going to become a trend because of this. changing of the climatenotes Matthew Morrison, maintenance ranger and tree care inspector.

The annual National Bloom Festival, which runs until April 16 this year, celebrating the donation of 3020 cherries from Japan in the city of Washington in 1912.

Two of these trees were planted by then First Lady Ellen Taft and Viscountess Chida, wife of the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, in front of a small crowd. This then small congregation was responsible for creating the festival, which officially began 23 years later, in 1934.

The average lifespan of a Japanese cherry ranges from approx. 30 to 40 years old. However, two trees planted by two ladies, Taft and Chinda, and a few more trees from that bakery, still standing 111 years later.

“It defies science“, says Morsion, who attributes this anomaly to “a small magic associated with this wonderful gift” and his team’s painstaking year-round care of cherries.

Many of the 3,700 trees adorning the 590-acre park are offshoots of the original trees, Morrison said, with the rest regularly donated to the charity Casey Trees of Washington.

Morrison manages a team of just three arborists who take care of the trees and keep for each of them “personal health history“. These arborists prune and monitor trees, recording their findings in a database.

Three years ago, Morrison introduced her practice ground cover “An copious amount of small pieces of wood to create the most favorable growing conditions. As the wood chips decompose, he says, beneficial bacteria and fungi are released that connect the tree root systems and “allow them to communicate with each other and carry nutrients to each other so that they now function as a superorganism.”

The wood chips also act as a natural boundary between grass and trees, limiting the impact of mowers on the underside of trunks.

Source: Associated Press.