Cherry Blossom Meaning: What Each Sakura Color Actually Says
In January 1910, a shipment of two thousand cherry trees arrived in Washington, D.C., a gift from the city of Tokyo. Inspectors found them riddled with insects and crown gall. President Taft ordered every last one burned. It could have ended there. Instead Tokyo sent 3,020 more, grown from scion wood taken along the Arakawa River, and on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft put the first one in the ground beside the Tidal Basin. Two trees from that morning are still alive. That is the whole argument of the cherry blossom in one story — something that lasts about ten days a year has outlived the men who burned its predecessors. Cherry blossom meaning turns on that tension between brevity and endurance. And the color of the petal changes the sentence it finishes. 🌸 Flower Profile Scientific Name Prunus serrulata (and Prunus × yedoensis, the Yoshino cherry) Family Rosaceae — the rose family, alongside apples, almonds and hawthorn Origin Temperate East Asia — Japan, C...