By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 7, 2008

Talk about a drum roll.

The dignitaries, including Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, were in a swanky ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington yesterday to hear the National Park Service's annual cherry blossom forecast.

In marched the Dunbar High School drum line -- about a dozen young men in maroon and black uniforms with hats of silver and white plumes and an arsenal of drums and cymbals.Their thundering paean to spring was enough to wake the blossoms.

But, moments later, Park Service horticulturalist Rob DeFeo said that nature would soon take care of that. The annual multimillion-dollar blooming period should start about March 24, peak March 27 through April 3 and last about 10 more days.

Cherry Blossom Festival boosters rejoiced -- the predicted peak coincides with the 16-day event, which brings in about a million visitors each year, and, the mayor said yesterday, about $184 million.

This year's festival, the 96th, will honor the 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees to the United States from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo. It starts March 29 at the National Building Museum and culminates April 12, with the customary parade along Constitution Avenue and Japanese street fair along Pennsylvania Avenue. The festival ends April 13.

The Park Service said it is inaugurating a shuttle service to show festival-goers the sometimes-forgotten cherry trees in East Potomac Park, between the Jefferson Memorial and Hains Point.

"The Cherry Blossom Festival probably, foremost, signals the welcoming of spring, not just to Washington, D.C., and our region but to the entire country," Fenty (D) said. It also "has a dramatic . . . impact on the District and the region's economy." Forty-five percent of festival visitors traditionally come from outside the region, Fenty said. "They will spend dollars in hotels, restaurants, transportation companies, retailers. . . . So there's a lot to celebrate."

DeFeo, who has been issuing his annual blossom forecast for 17 years, took to the podium amid applause. He said he gets a lot of advice. Last year, a scholarly paper suggested using complex mathematical formulas. He said he couldn't understand them. Another year, someone suggested he taste the buds. That was no help, he said.

Instead, he uses his "time-tested method of simply going out and looking at the telltale signs of spring that you see everywhere."

He said peak bloom occurs when 70 percent of the white and pink flowers are out. The total blooming period is about 14 days, he said.

Another Washington locale will soon be producing blossoms. The Nationals baseball team is planting 14 Kwanzan cherry trees this week in the plaza on the north side of its new stadium, along South Capitol Street SE. The trees will be part of the panorama that fans will see over the left-field wall. City officials and team executives held a ceremony yesterday marking the planting.

"All we need now is to get them to blossom on time," said Frank Gambino, vice president at Lerner Enterprises, which owns the team.

Staff writer Dan LeDuc contributed to this report.