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When I saw the headline, I expected this article would be about Jokichi Takamine, a biotechnology pioneer from Japan who paid for the 2000 sakura trees donated to DC by the governor of Tokyo. I wasn't aware of the Fairchild/Marlatt stories, so it's interesting to see how the multiple historical threads converge.

https://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/mdd/v04/i12/html/12ti...

When I lived in DC I had very mixed feelings about the impact of the Cherry Blossom Festival. On one hand its creates a ton of Tourism Revenue for the city, on the other the streets and parks become over crowded and you see the increase in litter and pollution at the parks.

I never heard this story and was only familiar with the story the Mayor of Tokyo donated the trees to establish friendly connections with the capital.

A quick search to the Wikipedia page though includes some detail about the Fairchild family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cherry_Blossom_Festiv...

I'm always torn--I love to see the cherry blossoms, but hate wading through the crowds of tourists.
Everyone wants their Facebook photo with the Jefferson Memorial in the background. I just wish they were aware enough to obey basic traffic rules and avoid walking in clearly marked bike lanes.