The First Cherry Trees of the Tidal Basin

Two trees started everything the Tidal Basin is now known for. On 27 March 1912 First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, each planted a Yoshino cherry on the north bank, the first two of a gift of more than 3,000 from Tokyo. Around a hundred of that original planting are thought to survive. These two are the ones you can actually pick out, marked by a bronze plaque at their base. They are old for what they are. Yoshino cherries in cultivation usually manage 50 to 100 years, and these are past 114, which is why the Park Service treats their survival as a story rather than a footnote. They were rooted here before the Lincoln Memorial was finished, before the Jefferson Memorial went up across the water, and before the festival that now walks well over a million people past them every spring. One honest note on the pin. The coordinates come from the surveyed position of the commemorative marker rather than from the trunks, and the marker itself has since been replaced by another one nearby, so expect to hunt for the plaque along a short stretch of path roughly 125 feet south of Independence Avenue. The trees are within a stone's throw of it.