Socially Distanced Cherry Blossoms

Last weekend was Peak Bloom here in DC, the time of the year when the most Cherry Blossoms are visible. It also marked the completion of the first full week of full-time working from home and the policy of social distancing. I thought about all the people that might want to flock to the Tidal Basin and felt inspired to develop a map that those practicing social distancing might use to view some of the Cherry Blossoms throughout the city.

Many cities across the globe maintain an online database of trees. I first stumbled across readily available tree information when I lived in Frankfurt, Germany. The city’s online database was the first collection of its kind that I saw, and I was fascinated by the recorded ages of the trees I’d walk past daily, almost oblivious to how long they’d been there and all that they’d seen. A random sampling of trees on the Main River embankment shows some that were planted in the 1930s, and another from 1910 (which I’ve marked with an “X”):

That is remarkable given that much of the surrounding buildings were completely destroyed in World War II. (Note: I’m also really, really interested in Frankfurt).

DC is no different. The city maintains all kinds of open data on their website which can be downloaded and further manipulated in ArcGIS, a common program for analyzing and displaying spatial data. To help facilitate social distancing, I downloaded the dataset of trees maintained by DC, cleaned the dataset, filtered the data to select only trees of the Prunus genus (to which Cherry Blossoms belong). Finally, I exported the data from GIS and imported it into a Google Map I created that lends itself better to sharing. I’m already thinking of adding other datasets of trees managed by the National Park Service and the Architect of the Capitol to an updated map next year, potentially with pictures. Hopefully by then the social distancing will be long over, but it’s always a joy to find your own, private tree. Beauty is all around us if we chose to see it and delight in it.

EDIT: This map was also mentioned in today’s “Your Daily Survival Guide,” from the DC events website Brightest Young Things.