What to know
- Reports of visitors pulling branches, climbing trees, and plucking blossoms have already surfaced ahead of peak bloom.
- The sakura trees are fragile and short-lived, and repeated mishandling can lead to disease, pruning, and weaker blooms in future years.
- Experts stress that cherry blossom viewing is about respectful appreciation, and visitors shouldn’t touch or climb trees.
The sakura cherry blossoms have not even reached their full bloom, but reports of people pulling branches or climbing trees are already coming up.
With the cherry blossoms set to reach their peak this weekend, tens of thousands of people are expected to visit the trees that symbolize the arrival of spring.
While the full bloom has yet to happen, users online are already reporting seeing people hanging on trees or pulling their branches.
This is not the first time some were caught mishandling the sakura trees. Last year, online users were also exposing and calling out visitors for breaking park rules and not being careful with the trees.
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As stated on the High Park Nature website, usually, the lifespan of sakura trees is only 30 to 40 years. However, through extensive care by the city, their lives have been extended past that.
Development Director at the High Park Nature Centre Rohith Rao tells Now Toronto that mishandling can be damaging to the trees, leading to consequences not just instantly but also for the future.
“It’s not just one person doing it. Imagine the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to High Park during cherry blossom season, say just 1,000 of them keep pulling down on a branch. It’s going to eventually damage it,” he explained.
“The city will need to prune these branches and remove them so that the rest of the branches can grow well into future years. But the more people keep pulling down on branches, plucking blossoms and stuff, it’s gonna leave it more prone to disease and leave it vulnerable to not having a good bloom in future seasons.”
Appreciating the blossoms
Rui Umezawa, Chief Advisor to the Consul-General of Japan in Toronto, explains that the sakura cherry blossoms are a symbol of friendship between Japan and Canada, and first came to Toronto in 1959 when the Japanese ambassador at the time donated 2,000 of them to the city.
In Japan, the bloom of the sakura trees marks the beginning of springtime, starting at the south of the country and gradually moving upwards. According to Umezawa, the moment is highly awaited by many people in the country, with flower viewing being a widespread practice.
“Sakura really is the mark of spring, and that’s why it’s appreciated…They bloom for a very short period of time. So it’s just a time to focus your attention and appreciate this time of season,” he explains.
Having a long history of Sakura Hanani (which means sakura viewing), the practice is much more widely understood across the country, with most people being aware of how to carefully handle them.
As explained by Rao, through the practice, most people engage with the blossoms and appreciate their beauty without touching them.
“In Japanese culture, also to engage respectfully with the blossom, it’s more so admiring the beauty of nature, but also respecting the fact that these trees are living beings. Just allow everyone to experience and enjoy the blossoms,” he said.
The expert says that mishandling of the sakura tree is not exactly a Toronto problem, as these behaviours have been seen in other cities as well. Oftentimes, he believes these behaviours might happen because people are not aware of how to best handle the trees.
For that reason, he says volunteers and workers at High Park will be deployed on-site to offer information about the blossoms and educate people on how to properly engage with them.
“It might be the first time ever in High Park, the first time ever out in nature, the first time ever in Toronto,” Rao said.
“We all had the very first thing that got us hooked on to nature and hooked on to protecting nature, including the cherry blossoms and that’s why it’s important be friendly, welcoming and educational in your approach, rather than have it be like, ‘This is a rule you should follow it.’”
When it comes to cherry blossom viewing etiquette, Rao recommends three things:
- Don’t touch or pluck the blossoms;
- Don’t climb, lean, pull down or break branches;
- Only take away photos and memories.
“Just stand in front of the trees, stand a bit away from the blossoms. Have the trees in the background. They look beautiful in the background,” he added.
The expert also urges visitors to remain on the paved trails and avoid tempering with High Park’s ecosystem. In addition, he explains that the cherry blossoms’ season also coincides with the hatching of small turtles in the area, and emphasizes that visitors should be careful to not step on turtles or their hatchlings, which can be as small as a loonie.
