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As springtime arrives in NYC, so do cherry blossoms
By
Christian Santana
and
Tiffany Hanssen
Published Mar 30, 2025
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Daniel Shapiro
By
Christian Santana
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Tiffany Hanssen
Published Mar 30, 2025
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It's spring in New York City, and you know what that means: Cherry blossom season is upon us.
Although peak bloom season won't be for another few weeks, a number of parks and gardens in the city have rolled out cherry trackers, including Central Park, the New York Botanical Garden and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. You can also check out the parks department's citywide Bloom Guide for details on where to catch these and other flowering trees throughout the five boroughs. If you're in New Jersey, Branch Brook Park in Essex County is renowned for its cherry blossoms — it has the nation's largest and most varied collection of cherry blossom trees, according to its website.
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden's President and CEO Adrian Benepe recently joined Tiffany Hanssen on "All Things Considered" to discuss the beloved blooms. Their conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Tiffany Hanssen: It's "All Things Considered" on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen. We have passed the threshold into meteorological spring and today certainly feels springlike, if not summerlike. And if you're looking for signs of our change of seasons, one of the most flashy is perhaps the annual bloom of the city's cherry blossoms. With us to talk about when and where we can see New York City's cherry blossoms is the president and CEO of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Adrian Benepe. Hello, Adrian.
Adrian Benepe: Hi. So good to be with you, Tiffany.
So when we say cherry blossoms, do we really mean cherry trees?
Yeah, they're a tree in the cherry family or the Prunus family. They've been bred for their flowers, so they're not robust producers of fruits. Other kinds of cherry trees are bred for their fruits, for the cherries, but they're all in the same family.
And do we have just a single variety of cherry tree that's around the city, or do we have multiple varieties that we're looking at?
We have multiple varieties. Traditionally in parks and botanic gardens in New York City, what you have are mainly Japanese cultivars, so kinds of flower and cherry trees that were cultivated in Japan and have spread around the world.
You know, the Japanese were very interested in exporting their varieties, and they did starting in 1912 with these big gifts to New York and Washington, and some of the original cherry tree gifts are still blooming in Washington, D.C. and in Central Park in New York. Our oldest trees at Brooklyn Botanic Garden are slightly younger, planted in the early 1920s.
But we have more than 220 cherry trees here at Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Primarily two varieties. There's the yoshino, which tend to flower earlier and have a lighter, more delicate petal. And then the larger sort of carnation-shaped blossoms of the kanzan cherries that come more sort of mid to late April.
And we're just starting out just now. We've got a couple of cherry trees, the early okame, that are blooming. So the peak cherry season is probably still two or three weeks away, but the big news today is we've launched our cherry watch, which is a feature on our website, and you can see exactly where blooming cherries are.
Each day gets updated.
So the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is not the only place for folks to see cherry blossoms around the city. I assume the New York Botanical Garden has them as well.
Oh, sure. And we love them. They're our sister organization. I worked there many years ago. They have a great cherry tree collection.
So you can see cherries all around the city. There are cherry trees in Riverside Park, in Central Park and Fort Tryon Park. There's a great collection in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, a very important collection of Japanese flowering cherry trees there, too. So anywhere you see a pink blossom in the next few months, it could be cherry, but be careful — it could also be a crab apple.
There are pink crab apples that flower a little bit later, more after mid-April. And the main way you can tell the difference, the easiest way for your listeners to tell the difference between a cherry and a crab apple is smell. Cherries don't really have a scent.
They're kind of without a scent, but a very perfume scent to the crab apple. So if you come near a flowering cherry tree this spring that has a beautiful scent, that's a crab apple, not a cherry.
Oh, good to know. So what predicts what kind of bloom it will have? Is it like daytime, nighttime temperatures? Is it just the tree? Is it a combination of things?
It's a combination. First of all, it's really what is the variety? And we don't call them species because they're all really part of one species, but there are many different cultivars or varieties. That means that horticulturists have bred these trees for different characteristics.
So the kanzan tree, which is the one many people think of, has a big fluffy, multipetaled carnationlike flower. And it really fills the tree, so it almost looks like cotton candy or a cloud of pink. Whereas the much more delicate yoshino cherries are gonna bloom a little bit earlier. They tend to be very sort of artistically refined and very delicate.
And then there are other earlier blooming species. There's even a ever blooming species that blooms in winter, and that's been blooming for a few weeks already here.
No, I know you said that. You know, depending on the tree. It can be an earlier bloom or a later bloom, but generally speaking, we're kind of headed into what we would consider peak, kind of cherry blossom viewing time here in New York, right?
Yes. I don't want to be guilty of false advertising. It's just starting. We won't be at peak for another three weeks.
Got it.
But I will say we're just about to peak. I'm looking out the window now at our Magnolia Plaza, which is full of blooming magnolias, including some that look like big puffy clouds.
If we got a lot of warm, sunny summer days very quickly or warm spring days, you'll see an earlier flowering of the cherry trees because they're responsive to both light and temperature.
We've been talking with the president and CEO of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Adrian Benepe about New York City's cherry blossoms. Adrian, thanks.
OK, thank you. Great to talk with you and come on out.
Tagged
new york city
environment
Christian Santana
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Tiffany Hanssen
Tiffany is a host on WNYC. You can hear her regularly on Saturdays and Sundays during All Things Considered.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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