Why Are Japan's Cherry Blossom Trees Blooming in Fall?

    Japan is crowned with a fluttery wreath of pink cherry blossoms, which draw crowds of admirers and inspire many celebrations. But this year, as Laurel Wamsley reports for NPR the country's cherry blossoms have made an unexpected second appearance-in the middle of fall. The blossoms have been sighted in an area stretching from Kyushu, in western Japan, to Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's main islands.

      Recent extreme weather events, including two typhoons that hit Japan in September and early October are the likely force behind the unusual bloom. Hiroyuki Wada of the Flower Association of Japan tells NHK that the Yoshino cherry tree, which puts on a particularly lovely display of blossoms, buds in the summer, but hormones in the trees leaves stop the buds from opening until spring. This year, however, typhoons whipped the leaves from the cherry blossom trees, or otherwise exposed the trees to salt that caused their leaves to wither. The lack of hormones to keep the buds in check, coupled with warm temperatures that followed the storms, prompted the buds to blossom.

    Though the recent bloom is particularly anomalous, the cherry blossoms' flowering date has been creeping earlier and earlier over the past 150-odd years, Jason Samenow of the Washington Post reported last year. In Kyoto in 1850, for instance, the average bloom date was April 17. Today, the average date is around April 6. Various factors affect the trees' blooming period, but the warmer it is in March, the earlier the cherry blossoms bloom." Samenow writes.

 

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