91探花arborist Sara Shores recommends looking for cherry blossoms in your local parks and neighborhood streets. There are dozens of different varieties of blossoming cherry and plum trees in the Seattle area, with blooms visible from early February until May, for some species.
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Bloom colors range from white to light rose to dark pink, and cherry trees 鈥� unlike plums 鈥� have distinct horizontal-line patterns on their bark called聽. These help the trees 鈥渆xhale鈥� or release carbon dioxide and water.
Plum trees, which often are mistaken for cherry trees, bloom earlier than most cherries and don鈥檛 have lenticels on their bark.
Many of the earliest-flowering pink trees each spring are plums, Shores said. She recommends checking the bark to verify. Plum flowers also tend to smell sweeter than cherry flowers.
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Kiyomi Taguchi聽ktaguchi@uw.edu聽/ 206-685-2716