The Witness Trees: Did Some of Japan’s Doomed 1910 Cherry Trees Survive?

It’s hard to imagine Washington, D.C., without cherry blossoms. The crowds that gather at the Tidal Basin each spring owe them to Tokyo, which gave the trees to the American people in 1912. But that famous gift had a lesser-known predecessor — and some of it may still be growing.

The gift that was burned

In 1910, Japan sent 2,000 cherry trees to Washington. Soon after they arrived, U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors found them diseased and infested with insects. Fearing harm to American agriculture, they ruled the trees must be destroyed, and President William Howard Taft ordered them burned.

Japanese officials responded graciously. They quickly arranged an even larger gift of 3,020 trees — the origin of the beloved cherries around the Tidal Basin today.

A mystery on the golf course

For years it was assumed that none of the 1910 trees survived. But Robert DeFeo, former chief horticulturist for the NPS National Capital Region, found USDA records showing that two dozen trees were first set aside and quarantined for entomologists to study. The records don’t say where. DeFeo believed they were planted near Hains Point, on land — now part of the East Potomac Golf Course — that was then barren ground newly built from Potomac River dredgings.

A cluster of old Yoshino cherries on the golf course fits the story:

• They are planted in rows, showing deliberate planting, but far more widely spaced than a nursery would use — just right for a quarantine.
• They are large, with heavy decay and deadwood, suggesting they date from the early 1900s.
• Most of their main branches are hollow, consistent with an old insect infestation.
• Most convincing of all, DNA analysis showed they do not match any of the surviving 1912 Yoshino trees.

Since no other cherry plantings are known between 1912 and Japan’s next gift in 1965, these trees may well be survivors of the doomed 1910 shipment. In 2006 the National Park Service designated them Witness Trees.

Trees that have seen history

That same year, the Park Service created the Witness Tree Protection Program, part of the Historic American Landscapes Survey, to document trees that have “witnessed” important historic and cultural events. As a pilot for the nation, it designated 24 biologically and historically significant trees in the National Capital Region. Besides the cherries, Witness Trees on or near the National Mall include:

• the Jefferson Elm near the Smithsonian Castle
• the Grant Memorial Bur Oak
• the Botanic Garden Elm
• the Andrew Jackson Southern Magnolia on the White House lawn

If only trees could talk.

Sources

Based on "The Witness Tree," National Park Service (National Mall and Memorial Parks); a work of the United States government in the public domain.