Washington, DC’s cherry trees draw visitors every spring with their blossoms. Cherry trees were gifted from Japan in 1912 as a symbol of friendship and are still present today approx As famous as flowers in the country of origin. After receiving the cherry trees, the US responded by sending flowering dogwood trees led by President William Howard Taft.
Cherry trees are a staple of the DC skyline and a symbol of the Japan-US relationship. However, in the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor, DC’s limbs were broken off in retaliation. According to the National Park Service, in the 1980s, floods in Japan destroyed these types of cherry trees, but Japanese horticulturists were able to restore some of the lost trees using hundreds of cuttings from Washington, DC trees.
