Inspecting the flowering cherry /Carlos Pueblo

Inspecting the flowering cherry /Carlos Pueblo

In 2015 I was early for the Yoshino blossom; however, I did run into an

early blossom of Akebono, a name for day break flowing cherry. The location

is around Roosevelt Memorial as a volunteer park ranger pointed out to me

during a tour of the Memorial. The blossom has several colors in total, green,

red, pink, white, and a blue sky on the background showing in the photo on a

television. Thanks to Daniel, the young man of my host family, his computer

technology and art view. During the blossom, not like Yoshino no new leaf at

the beginning, Akebono has new leaf coming out simultaneously with the red

bud, then red pinky petals, soon the flowers  turn to white. When I shoot the

camera up, there are sky blue on the background. On the picture, the red buds

look like a bunch of red berries.

There are several Akebono trees hanging over to the wall because of more sunshine

and space. There are some 90 degree walls on the Memorial, the original design put

cherry trees on every corner; therefore, we can see flowers on all the hanging branches.

There are also some trees which stand independently inside and outside the Memorial.

Usually, Akebono blossoms a little bit late of Yoshino yet before Kwanzan.

I walked outside and inspected all the Akebono about 20 of them in total. The flowers

draw many visitors for photo. Then, I back tracked upstream on the Potomac River bank

toward a bridge to the Arlington Cemetery. There is a poster of Dr. Fairchild for his work

of the early development of Usuzumi and Fugenzo cherry trees in the Park. Later on, I do

check on the internet that there are 13 different species of flowering cherry in the Tidal

Basin area.

I walked back toward East parallel to the National Airport run way. The official map of the

Festival shows  the 13 cherry trees on the area, Yoshino 2662, Kwanzan 481, Weeping 94,

Autumn Flowering, Akebono 120, Takesimensis, Sagent 21, Usuzumi 50, Fugenzo 14,

Shirofugen, Okame, and First lady. The number are from the internet information. I must

admit that even though I have taken thousands of picture from the Park, I still can only

identify few of them.

Then, I came to a bridge over the entrance of Tidal Basin’s water to the Potomac. This is the

boundary of the west and east Potomac Park. There is an early blossom single flower of

Kwanzan.