This tree, next to a school playground along a busy city street, provides “an umbrella of flowers every spring,” said art teacher Tiffany Wilson. “It’s great to see natural beauty in an urban area.”
Approximately 70% of the thousands of cherry trees that Japan gave to America in 1912 — commemorated each spring by the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. — were Yoshinos. MLK’s tree, with a stunning spread that’s double its height, might be the Shidare weeping form. [Identification not 100%, however.]
This amazing cultivar has been called “the darling of the flowering tree world” because of its vibrant display of pink-white blossoms and faint almond fragrance in the spring.
