The Innovator Who Introduced Cherry Blossoms to the US

When I lived in DC I had very mixed feelings about the impact of the Cherry Blossom Festival. On one hand its creates a ton of Tourism Revenue for the city, on the other the streets and parks become over crowded and you see the increase in litter and pollution at the parks.

I never heard this story and was only familiar with the story the Mayor of Tokyo donated the trees to establish friendly connections with the capital.

A quick search to the Wikipedia page though includes some detail about the Fairchild family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cherry_Blossom_Festiv...

When I saw the headline, I expected this article would be about Jokichi Takamine, a biotechnology pioneer from Japan who paid for the 2000 sakura trees donated to DC by the governor of Tokyo. I wasn't aware of the Fairchild/Marlatt stories, so it's interesting to see how the multiple historical threads converge.

https://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/mdd/v04/i12/html/12ti...

Fun Fact: The largest collection of Cherry Blossoms in the United States is in Branch Brook Park in Newark, NJ

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2016/03/the_story_behind_br...

https://www.newarkhappening.com/cherry-blossom-festival/

related, Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Miami, https://www.fairchildgarden.org/

I thought it was going to be about the chocolate treat[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Blossom_(candy)