First stage leading to full bloom appears on Tidal Basin cherry trees, officials say

Budding cherry trees along the Tidal Basin on March 1, 2018. This year’s “green bud” stage has begun six days earlier than last year, the National Park Service said, though later than 2018. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Although recent days seemed far from the warmest parts of a warm winter, they were apparently enough to set Washington’s cherry blossoms on their path to eventual springtime glory.

In the lingo of horticulture, the Yoshino trees, the ones that ring the Tidal Basin, have reached “green bud.” That, the National Park Service said Friday, is the first of six stages on the path to peak bloom.

Few may find anything like the breathtaking beauty of full bloom in the small buds that have sprouted on the branches of the trees.

But just as the blossoms may be seen as symbolizing the fleeting nature of beauty, so the buds may also be regarded as symbols of the annual return of spring and the departure of winter.

This year’s winter has been warm, and in a tweet reminiscent of poetry, the park service said, “Mild winter temperature[s] make for eager cherry blossoms.”

But not an eagerness that is without precedent.

This year’s green bud stage began six days earlier than last year, the park service said, but it was later than 2017 and later than 2018.

The message made no prediction about when this year’s peak bloom will occur.