Picture of the Day: Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms like pink popcorn on branches

Vancouver is turning pink! 

Cherry blossoms were coming into full bloom in Kerrisdale and I managed to take a few pictures.

They are definitely different from plum blossoms, which have fewer flowers and are darker in hue, whereas cherry blossoms are more dense in terms of petals and are hung in clumps that look kind of like pink popcorn hanging from branches!

There are thousands of cherry trees

For Vancouverites there's no need to go to Japan to see sakura -- we have over 43,000 cherry trees in the city. Hundreds were planted in the early 1930s by the mayors of Kobe and Yokohama in honour of Japanese Canadians who served in World War I. 

Then in 1935, immigrant Japanese couple Bunjiro and Kimi Uyeda donated a thousand young cherry trees to the Vancouver Park Board.

The city has thousands more cherry trees than the National Mall in Washington DC, which only has 3,800.

And it's not a Japanese city with the most cherry trees -- that honour goes to Changwon, South Korea with 360,000 trees.