Figure 1.— Potomac Park in the middle and late 19th century. 



Through the ages, the Japanese have equated the brief transient beauty of 

 the cherry blossom with that of the human life: 



Yo no naka wa 



Mikka minu ma ni 



Sakura kana 



[Life is short, like the three day 



glory of the cherry blossom. (1)] ] 



By 1800, a collection of approximately 1,000 cherry trees containing 

 nearly 80 different selections had been planted at Kyoto, Japan (2). At the 

 end of the 19th century, the Sakura had become an integral part of Japa- 

 nese culture with more than 130 recognized cultivated selections. Eliza 

 Scidmore, an American writer traveling in Japan at the turn of the 20th 

 century, wrote that "except Fuji-Yama and the moon, no other object has 

 been theme and inspiration of so many millions of Japanese poems as the 

 cherry blossom ..." (3) (fig. 2). 2 



'Italic numbers in parentheses refer to Notes and Selected References, p. 30-35. 

 2 See Appendix, p. 36, for biographic information on E. R. Scidmore and other prominent 

 individuals mentioned in this publication. 



2 



