Predicting spring bloom is an art and a science
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What is the significance of the Cherry Blossom Festival?
On Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz, we've had some of the biggest stars in the world come on the show, but we don't ask them the questions everybody else does. You know, the ones they can answer. We ask them questions about things they don't know anything about. Some of them seem to enjoy the novelty. Join us for the show that always zigs when they say jump. That's NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here with a quick favor to ask. Can you send us a voice memo to shortwave at NPR.org with your questions about science and specifically about your local environment? That would help a lot. Include your name, where your home is, and your question, and we might consider it for a future episode. Thank you so much. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, everyone. Emily Kwong here with someone very special to our team, shortwave intern Aru Nair. Hey, Emily. What's up? You and I are at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., and it's your first time living in the district.
How's it going? It is. I'm originally from Wyoming, and I moved to D.C. last fall. My favorite part has definitely been the public transit. It's very magical to me. It's a joy to ride. But there is one particular event that happens every spring that's a huge deal. Emily, have you heard of the Cherry Blossom Festival?
You can't escape it. This time of year, the cherry blossom marketing is everywhere. But originally, these blossoms came from trees gifted by Japan in 1912. And now they turn the city into this like soft pink wonderland. Yeah, there's so many trees in bloom right now.
Yeah.
So we have 20,000 trees park wide, but of the cherry trees in particular, we have right around 3,700.
So this is Matthew Morrison. He's an arborist and urban forester with the National Park Service. And he told me every single year, locals and tourists flood the National Mall for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival to view these millions of flowers.
It's like a flower garden where the flowers are 30 feet tall. It's really what it is.
But as you know, Emily, these flowers are really fragile and they're only around for a couple of weeks. And in some cases, it's been as short as five days. So the festival is ideally planned for when all these trees are in peak bloom.
It does feel like Pennsylvania has Groundhog Day and we have this. Like this is D.C. 's homegrown sign of spring. Right.
And I wanted to know, what is peak bloom really? So I asked Mike Glitters to define it for me. He's the chief of communications for the National Mall and Memorial Parks.
We've got a dozen different varieties of trees, but the Yoshinos are far and away the most prevalent. So when 70% of those trees have blossomed, we say it's peak bloom.
Okay, so when 70% of the Yoshino cherry trees are in bloom, that is peak bloom.
Exactly. And the National Parks team, it's actually their job to predict when the peak bloom will arrive every year. And let's just say it's kind of a guesstimate.
It's a wild-ass guess. There is some science involved in it.
Today on the show, the art and science of guessing peak bloom. What are the stages of cherry tree blossoming? And how do scientists make that big prediction?
You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
OK, short wavers, once again, we are on our monthly nature quest brought to you by someone who's paying attention to how their local environment is changing. And this month, that person is shortwave intern Aru Nair. So what goes into a cherry tree bloom, Aru?
Well, I didn't really know. So to find out, I went with one of our producers, Hannah Chin, down to the tidal basin. It was damp and chilly. You could hear the jets overhead and the trees looked totally bare. That sounds like D.C. in winter. Yeah. We went there to talk to Matthew.
I've been an arborist since 1979. I oversee everything to do with the trees.
He told us there's six stages of cherry tree blossoming. I love a numbered list. Okay, walk me through these stages. So to set the stage, in winter, the trees are dormant.
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