dendroica:

You’ll seldom find a more gnarled, knobbed or bent-over bunch of geezer trees than these ancient Yoshino cherries lining a short stretch of the Tidal Basin. It’s an orchard of gnomes and trolls, a grove of exhausted old- timers boasting all the upright rigor of melted candles. And yet, stand back. The “originals” are about to bust a bloom. For the 100th spring in a row, it’s showtime for the survivors of the first 3,000 Japanese cherry trees planted here a century ago this month. The number of alums from the Class of 1912 is down to a few dozen, most of them bunched in this little forest of the wizened next to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. They are living relics of history’s greatest diplo-botanical goodwill gesture, and they’ve borne a century of witness to a transformation they helped to spark: the emergence of Washington as not just a powerful city but a beautiful one. “The first cherry trees helped crystallize an image of what Washington could look like,” said Thomas Luebke, secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and one of the watchdogs of Washington’s core handsomeness. “It’s remarkable that some of the original trees are still with us.” (via Washington’s century-old cherry trees: wizened but still able to bust a bloom - The Washington Post)

(via dendroica)