East Potomac Park, Washington DC, USA
(Library of Congress)
The presence of sakura cherry trees in East Potomac Park, Washington DC, is a result of the passion of writer and traveller Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, the first female board member of the National Geographic Society.
Scidmore, a frequent traveller to Japan, first suggested planting sakura to the park superintendent in 1885. The idea was rejected. Still determined, she spent the next twenty-four years bringing the same idea before every subsequent superintendent, still without success. Finally, in 1909, Scidmore pledged herself to raise the funds to buy the sakura and give them to the city by her own means.
She wrote to the new first lady, President Taft’s wife Lady Helen Herron Taft, who had lived in Japan. Lady Taft took up the cause and suggested the trees form an avenue. Almost immediately, eminent Japanese chemist (and discoverer of adrenalin) Dr. Jokichi Takamine donated 2,000 further sakura in the name of Tokyo. However, on arrival in Washington DC on January 6, 1910, the 2,000 trees were found to be irreparably diseased and were destroyed. Undeterred, Dr. Takamine increased the number of trees he would donate to more than 3,000. In March 1912, Lady Taft and the wife of the Japanese Ambassador, Viscountess Chinda, planted two trees, and the remaining trees were placed in the park between 1913 and 1920. The original two still stand. Here we see Sumi and Sada Tamura, daughters of Mr. Teijiro Tamura, former Third Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in the United States.
‘The White House, Washington
April 7, 1909
Thank you very much for your suggestion about the cherry trees. I have taken the matter up and am promised the trees, but I thought perhaps it would be best to make an avenue of them, extending down to the turn in the road. Of course, they could not reflect in the water, but the effect would be very lovely of the long avenue. Let me know what you think about this.
Sincerely yours,
Helen H. Taft’
Letter from Lady Taft to Eliza Scidmore, 1909
