Until The New York Times pointed it out earlier this month, I had failed to notice, alas, that Tokyo had given cherry trees to this city as it did to Washington, D.C., 100 years ago ("Gifts From Japan, Less Celebrated in Manhattan," April 12).
I had known about the cherry trees in the nation's capital for some years, but it's only recently that I began to see, online, The Washington Post write about their imminent blossoming — yes, just as the Japanese media report on the "sakura front": providing day-to-day forecasts as spring warmth creeps north.
This shows, I marveled, how times have changed. If I can trust my memory to any extent, not long after arriving here four decades ago, I read that some American horticulturalists regarded cherry trees as arboreal "weeds" that suck up all the nutrients from the soil and enfeeble all the others. No wonder, I thought, the cherry trees in Central Park looked somewhat unkempt. Now I see the real reason was different.