Where to find cherry and plum blossoms across Seattle
As we come to the last week of March, the anticipation for cherry blossoms in Seattle is reaching a fever pitch. The Yoshino cherry trees on the University of Washington Quad are in partial bloom, and you can follow their progress on their official website, webcam, or Twitter account. Perennial guides to cherry blossoms around the city will include many familiar names: the world-famous spring blooms at Washington Park Arboretum, UW Campus, Lake Washington Boulevard near Seward Park, and Jefferson Park rightfully appear at the top of most lists.
In addition to these chart-topping destinations, I wanted to know if there were overlooked gems for blossom watching around Seattle. The answer was surprisingly hard to find, since there isn’t a central database for flowering cherry trees in Seattle. With an enormous amount of help from tree data stewards around Seattle, I combined information from five different databases to get a more comprehensive view of trees around the city:
- Trees in the public right of way, from Seattle Department of Transportation
- University of Washington campus trees, maintained by UW Facilities
- Seattle Parks and Recreation Urban Forestry Prunus trees inventory
- Seattle Parks and Recreation Urban Food Systems fruit trees inventory
- Washington Park Arboretum Trees, maintained by UW Botanical Gardens
I filtered these sources to trees from the Prunus genus, which includes cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, and almonds. Of these, I tagged seven species and their cultivars as “flowering cherries.” Other trees in the genus have blooms worth seeking out—notably, “Thundercloud” Purple-leaf Plum trees are in spectacular bloom at the time of writing. Some trees in the dataset were labeled as Prunus sp., which could be any species in the genus, but are most likely cherry or plum trees.
The combined dataset includes over 30,000 Prunus trees across Seattle, including over 12,000 flowering cherry trees. You can explore locations and information about each tree on the map below. At the top of the map, you can choose to view just flowering cherry species or all trees in the genus. The zoomed-out map highlights streets and parks that have dense clusters of trees: click on a street or park (tap on mobile) to focus in on that area, or zoom in to see trees in a particular neighborhood. Make sure to explore your neighborhood even if it isn’t highlighted—there are probably still blossoms nearby!
Some of the varieties of flowering cherries that can be found around Seattle include:
- Japanese cherry, Prunus serrulata: This ornamental species includes the famous “Kwanzan”, “Shirotae”, “Amanogawa”, and “Royal Burgundy” cultivars. There are over 7,000 Japanese cherries spread across almost every neighborhood in Seattle.
- Yoshino cherry, Prunus × yedoensis: A cross between the Oshima and Weeping cherries. There are over 1,400 citywide, including the famous UW Quad cherries as well as clusters along 38th Ave SW in West Seattle and Beacon Ave S in South Beacon Hill.
- Higan cherry, Prunus × subhirtella: Over 1,400 citywide, including several clusters on streets between Greenwood and Green Lake Park.
- Sargent cherry, Prunus sargentii: Over 300 citywide, including clusters on S Charles St and S Dearborn St east of Rainier Ave. The eight trees removed from the entrance of Pike Place Market this spring were columnar Sargent cherries.
Trees on privately-held land outside of public rights of way aren’t included in this data, so even if you don’t see many flowering cherries near you on the map, you might be delighted by a trip around your neighborhood.
Acknowledgments
I would like to sincerely thank the tree experts and GIS professionals who made this map possible:
- Sara Shores, University Arborist for the University of Washington. In addition to pointing me towards an interactive map trees on the University of Washington campus, Sara shared a guide to the UW campus cherry blossoms.
- Jamie Lim, Seattle Parks and Recreation Arborist, Seattle Parks and Recreation Urban Forestry Team; Paris Yates, Seattle Parks and Recreation Urban Food Systems Program Manager; Jordan Ng, Seattle Parks and Recreation GIS Analyst; and Rodney Young, Seattle IT Department GIS Analyst, generously prepared and shared GIS data from Seattle Parks and Recreation tree inventories
- Matt Schropp-Lance at the Washington Park Arboretum Foundation directed me to the Arboretum’s interactive map and Living Collection database
- Tracy Mehlin, retired librarian, who directed me to the GIS server underlying the Washington Park Arboretum map.
- Kelsey Desmond at Casey Trees kindly answered my questions and shared an interactive DC Cherry Blossom Map
Seattle’s tree inventories are constantly changing, and so data in the map may be out of date at the time of publication. Any mistakes in this post are entirely my own.
Have questions or comments? Let me know!