40 Fun Facts About Cherry Blossoms

Which Japanese word names the custom, said to date from the Nara period, of picnicking under blooming cherry trees?

Hanami means flower viewing, and the custom began among the elite of the Imperial Court before spreading to the samurai and then to ordinary people.

Why do Yoshino cherry trees planted side by side all burst into full bloom at almost the same moment?

They are clones, each grafted from another tree rather than grown from seed, so every Yoshino has the same genes and answers spring warmth in the same way.

Why did American officials burn the first 2,000 cherry trees that Japan shipped to Washington in 1910?

They were full of insects and nematodes, so inspectors had them destroyed to protect American growers, and Japan answered with a healthier gift of 3,020 trees.

The scent of cherry blossoms, which comes mainly from the compound coumarin, is usually likened to which flavoring?

Vanilla is the usual comparison, yet coumarin can harm the liver in large doses, which is why the blossoms are cured before anyone eats them.

Japan's national team in which sport is nicknamed the Brave Blossoms and wears a sakura emblem on its jerseys?

Rugby union it is: the team has worn the flower since its first internationals in the 1930s, drawn as a bud, a half-open bloom and a full one.

Which Georgia city, planted with some 300,000 Yoshino trees, calls itself the Cherry Blossom Capital of the World?

Macon owes its trees to realtor William Fickling, who found one in his own yard and gave away so many saplings that he became the city's Johnny Appleseed.

Which president's wife planted the first of Washington's Japanese cherry trees in West Potomac Park in March 1912?

Helen Taft planted it beside Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, then handed her a bouquet of American Beauty roses.

Japan's cherry blossom season opens each January in which island prefecture, months before the flowers reach Tokyo?

Okinawa blooms first, and forecasters then follow the so-called cherry blossom front as it sweeps north, reaching Hokkaido last.

A teasing Japanese proverb says most cherry blossom picnickers care less about the flowers than about which food?

Dumplings rather than flowers, the saying goes, poking fun at people who turn up for the food and drink more than the view.

Which flowering tree did the United States give Japan in return for the cherry trees planted in Washington in 1912?

Dogwood trees went to the people of Japan, and the exchange kept going: in 1982 Japan took cuttings from Washington's cherries to replace trees lost in a flood.

Which Washington reservoir, built to flush a nearby harbor channel, is ringed by the capital's best-known cherry trees?

Tidal Basin planting ran from 1913 to 1920 and used Yoshinos, which made up 1,800 of Japan's gift trees, while the other eleven varieties went to East Potomac Park.

Which everyday Japanese coin, switched from silver to cupronickel in 1967, has shown cherry blossoms ever since?

100 yen coins gained their sakura in the year silver was dropped, a change that set off hoarding and the smuggling of old coins abroad to be melted.

In Japan, cherry blossoms are tied to fresh starts because which annual milestone begins in April, as the trees bloom?

The school year starts in April, as does the fiscal year, and most Japanese schools have cherry trees planted outside, so first days fall under blossom.

The Ohka of World War II, whose name means cherry blossom, was which kind of Japanese weapon?

Kamikaze aircraft is the grim answer: the rocket-powered Ohka was dropped from a bomber and flown by its pilot into a ship, and Allied troops nicknamed it the Baka, or fool.

Before cherry blossoms took over in the Heian period, which tree's flowers did Japan's Nara-era elite gather to admire?

Plum blossoms came first, a taste copied from Chinese parties of poetry and wine, and Japanese still has a word, umemi, for going to see them.

Sakuramochi, a pink spring rice cake filled with red bean paste, comes wrapped in a cherry leaf prepared in which way?

Pickled in salt water, the leaf is edible, though whether to eat it or peel it off is left to personal preference.

Japan marked a historic event of 1990 by donating thousands of cherry trees to which European capital?

Berlin received them to mark German reunification, and donations from the Japanese public paid for more than 9,000 trees along the old dividing line.

Which Nintendo video game series signals the start of spring by turning many of its trees into flowering cherries?

Animal Crossing treats the blossom as shorthand for spring, and in April 2020 Washington locals were reported getting their cherry blossom fix inside the game.

The Miharu Takizakura, a Fukushima cherry tree over 1,000 years old, is named for which natural feature it resembles?

A waterfall is what its pink branches suggest as they spill in every direction, and some 300,000 people a year visit the farming town of Miharu to see it.

Which president's wife accepted Japan's 1965 gift of 3,800 more Yoshino cherry trees for the city of Washington?

Lady Bird Johnson received trees that were, oddly for a present from Japan, grown in the United States, and many went onto the Washington Monument grounds.

In 1938, women chained themselves together in Washington to stop cherry trees being felled for which planned monument?

Jefferson Memorial builders settled the standoff with a compromise: more cherry trees were planted along the south side of the water to frame the new building.

During World War II, which word replaced Japanese in the name of Washington's cherry trees to deter vandals?

Oriental flowering cherry trees was the wartime label, adopted after four trees were cut down four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Botanist David Fairchild, who trialed Japanese cherry trees in Maryland in 1906, married which inventor's daughter?

Alexander Graham Bell became his father-in-law, and the Fairchilds liked their imported trees so much that they began urging Washington to line its avenues with them.

Ornamental cherry trees belong to the genus Prunus, which also includes apricots and which widely eaten nut?

Almond trees are close cousins, and the family likeness has a dark side: cherry seeds contain amygdalin and should not be eaten.

Which former Japanese capital holds cherry blossom bloom records reaching back about 1,200 years, to the year 812?

Kyoto's records show full bloom holding steady for about a thousand years, then sliding steadily earlier from the 1800s onward.

Yozakura, a custom popular in Tokyo's Ueno Park, means enjoying cherry blossoms under which conditions?

At night is the answer: the word means night cherry blossom, and parks hang temporary paper lanterns in the branches for the occasion.

Which New Jersey city's Branch Brook Park grew its 5,000 cherry trees from a 1927 gift by a store magnate's sister?

Newark got its trees from Caroline Bamberger Fuld, whose brother Louis ran Bamberger's department store, in what is also America's first county park.

Which Canadian city, home to about 40,000 cherry trees, has held a spring festival in their honor since 2005?

Vancouver's festival was founded by Linda Poole to commemorate 800 cherry trees that Japan gave the city, a stock that has since multiplied fifty times over.

Irezumi, which often pairs cherry blossoms with koi, dragons or tigers, is the traditional Japanese form of which art?

Tattooing was outlawed by Japan's government at the start of the Meiji period, which left irezumi and its blossoms with a lasting whiff of criminality.

Which Heian-era classic first used the Japanese word for flower viewing to mean cherry blossom viewing?

The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu's novel, also gives a whole chapter, Hana no En, to a cherry blossom banquet, a title often translated as The Festival of the Cherry Blossoms.

Which American travel writer began lobbying in 1885 for Japanese cherry trees to be planted along Washington's Potomac?

Eliza Scidmore was rebuffed by one parks superintendent after another for 24 years, and went on to be the first woman on the National Geographic Society's board.

Jokichi Takamine, the chemist who helped fund Washington's 1912 cherry trees, is famed for discovering which hormone?

Adrenaline was his discovery, and he happened to be in Washington when the planting plan came up, so he offered 2,000 more trees.

Sakura Sakura, a traditional Japanese cherry blossom folk song, is often the first piece learned on which instrument?

Koto students start with it because every phrase can be played on neighboring strings, and the tune is an Edo-period city melody, not an ancient one.

Which Japanese phrase, often translated as the pathos of things, names the wistful mood cherry blossoms evoke?

Mono no aware was tied to the blossoms by the 18th-century scholar Motoori Norinaga, who held that to be moved by their beauty was to understand the idea.

Which country holds its cherry blossom festivals in autumn, notably in Shillong, when wild Himalayan cherries bloom?

India's wild Himalayan cherry flowers in October and November, and a 1975 theory, since disputed by DNA studies, held that cherry trees began in that region.

Which warlord, unifier of Japan in the late 1500s, threw a famous cherry blossom party at Daigo-ji temple in 1598?

Toyotomi Hideyoshi had helped restore the temple's buildings beforehand, and he died that same September.

Which deep-pink, double-flowered cherry cultivar, the West's favorite, blooms two weeks after the Yoshino in Washington?

Kanzan, usually spelled Kwanzan in America, packs 20 to 50 petals into each flower and copes with cold regions better than the Yoshino does.

Tokyo's cherry blossom season is officially declared when flowers open on a sample tree at which place of worship?

Yasukuni Shrine holds the sample tree the Meteorological Agency watches for Tokyo, and opening day is called as soon as five or six flowers are out on it.

Which German port city holds the country's largest cherry blossom festival, capped by Japanese-style fireworks?

Hamburg is also one of only three cities in the world allowed by the Japan Cherry Blossom Association to crown its own Cherry Blossom Queen.

Which Aomori Prefecture landmark draws over a million visitors to a spring festival among its 2,600 cherry trees?

Hirosaki Castle blooms late, so its festival usually falls in the Golden Week holidays, at the end of April and the start of May.