Japan’s beautiful cherry blossoms are facing an ugly threat

Blame warmer winters: When flowers don’t last as long, they die off as new ones bloom, leaving cherry trees looking ‘kind of bedraggled.’

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The spring bloom of cherry blossoms is a stunning sight. Across Japan, Korea, and places like Washington, D.C., the trees burst with dense, pink flowers for just one or two weeks, bringing millions of tourists.

But climate change is threatening these blooms.

As the planet warms, our winters are getting milder. And those mild winters can delay the flowering of cherry blossom trees by up to 32 days, according to a new study by researchers at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Kyushu, Japan, in collaboration with Boston University. 

Without enough cold weather, the trees don’t know that winter has passed, and so they don’t know to come out of their winter dormancy state.

But more than just delaying the onset of flowers, mild winters are also making cherry blossoms less dramatic, affecting how many buds bloom and causing the trees to look less flush with flowers—which could have huge implications for tourism.

A less dramatic display

The study, published in the International Journal of Biometeorology, specifically looked at Yoshino cherry trees, a hybrid species developed in 19th-century Japan and the most popular varietal.

“What’s really unique about these cherry trees is they flower in a huge burst, like all the flowers open just at once, within a day or so,” says Richard Primack, a Boston University biology professor and coauthor of the study. “It’s an absolutely unbelievable flower display.”

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