Sakura Hanami 2013 at UW campus

by aleks

3/31/13 - UW Quad -  Easter Sunday Yoshino viewing:
filming, picnicking and just being there...

Once a year our beautiful UW campus looks more Japanese than Seattle Japanese Garden thanks to the huge amount of blossoming mature cherry trees there, which turn the place into a truly magical cherry blossom festival.  Yesterday Robert alerted that NOW is the time to head there, as the recent spring-like warmth that descended upon Seattle turned the trees on earlier than last year (2012 post on the topic was dated April 16).

3/31/13 - UW Quad - Yoshino blossom sprouting straight from the old trunk

First, there is the Quad, with 31 pale pink Yoshino cherry trees transplanted there from the Seattle Arboretum 45+ years ago when a freeway project threatened them.  There were so many people there today (Easter Sunday) that one might think people confused the Quad with the church:  strolling, laughing, picnicking, and everybody taking pictures.

3/31/13 - UW Quad - Yoshino blossom up close

3/31/13 - UW Quad: an idler-- / under the cherry blossoms / I live
.穀つぶし桜の下にくらしけり 

Kobayashi Issa 1806 (Translation by David Lanoue)

Then there is the road off the Red Square, with Mt. Rainier Vista in the distance, above the water fountain, lined with more vivid pink Hisakura  Cherries.  Found this information at the UW Tree Tour:

A double row of nine Hisakura cherry trees introduces Rainier Vista, between Suzzallo Library and Gerberding Hall. Across Grant Lane are six Kwanzan Cherries for comparison. Hisakura is an extremely rare Japanese flowering cherry that differs from common kwanzan in blooming earlier, not having pompom-weight flowers, growing broader, staying smaller and more dense, and in having narrower leaves less fringed on the edges. In a word, it is a restrained Kwanzan. Its chief virtues are its earlier bloom and lesser space requirements. These are the only campus specimens, and the variety is not available at nurseries.

3/31/13 - UW campus off the Red Square -
Blooming Hisakura cherries, Mt. Rainier and the old water fountain
(left after the The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition world's fair, held in Seattle in 1909)

Robert included this helpful link to Information & Visitors Center - it chronicles  Daily Quad blossom updates for this year...

3/31/13 - UW campus off the Red Square - Hisakura cherry

Brockman Memorial Tree Tour map, lists and locates some 67 of the estimated 480 kinds of trees planted around the university grounds, including the Kwanzan Cherry (Rainier Vista near Stevens Way), Yoshino Cherry (31 of which line the Quad), and Hisakura Cherry (near Red Square).

3/31/13 - UW campus off the Red Square -  Hisakura  blossoms  up close

Pinterest  has many photographs of the UW cherry blossoms, if you can't make it to the UW campus soon.