Japan is giving the United States 250 new cherry trees to help replace the hundreds that are being ripped out this summer as construction crews work to repair the crumbling seawall around the capital’s Tidal Basin.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the announcement as President Joe Biden welcomed him to the White House on Wednesday for an official visit and state dinner. Biden said the gift is meant to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. in 2026, adding, “Like our friendship, these trees are timeless, inspiring and thriving.”
In 1912, first lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador to the United States, planted two Yoshino cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac River’s Tidal Basin. They were part of the 3,000 such trees Japan gave the U.S. in a symbol of the two countries’ friendship.
This is a temporary solution to a climate change problem. They can’t keep building seawalls. The Potomac will flood and the brackish water will kill many of the famed cherry trees.
We get it, everything sucks. Nothing is allowed to ever be good, even little things.
We really should move the capital to somewhere in Missouri though, for geographical reasons. It’s total horseshit the capital is on one side of the country.
I mean, when it was created we didn’t exactly have the entire other half of the country.
I do agree though, a capital on the Mississippi or somewhere else in the central regions would be way way way more symbolic.
Right, they put it in the middle, when that was the middle. The middle had moved very far. I think it’s time to move to capital. Not just for symbolic reasons, but for practical reasons, too. It would make it a lot easier for people to petition their government directly when the capital is closer geographically.
The vast majority of Americans still live on the east coast. Something like 80% of our population is east of the Mississippi River still. People didn’t “go west” as much as school had us believe.
I remember seeing a project around a decade ago that tried to pinpoint a geographic population center, and I think it had barely moved to Eastern Ohio, much less farther west. And in recent years there’s been a huge amount of people relocating from West back East, mainly North Carolina.
People move, populations change. What is a “center” now will change.
The mean and median center of population for the US are in southern Illinois and Southern Missouri. So, yeah, anywhere in that area is a hell of a lot closer than DC.
That 80% number you just quoted is total bullshit.
Ok, but this seems like #78,374 on our priority list.
It seems that stretch of the Potomac doesn’t get much if any salt. It’s way up there and flows rather well, typically.
The tidal influence ends effectively at chain bridge, but they don’t call it the Tidal Basin for nothing, presumably.
Not to say salt couldn’t happen if there is a sustained drought + more sea level rise + a strong wind from the SE (Yes, that’s a big influence on the tidal fluctuation in the Chesapeake!)
Fun fact, sakura trees typically live to 20-40yo, and the DC Japanese Grove is more than 150yo now. They must be well cared for, or something else is going on.