Last year, an obsession with High Park’s gorgeous cherry trees was in full bloom, but it looks like Torontonians could be out of luck this year.
Steve Joniak, who in the past has been extremely reliable in predicting the peak bloom times of High Park’s Somei-Yoshino cherry groves, thinks that due to fluctuating temperatures the buds will not blossom this year. Joniak writes blog posts on Sakura Watch and has correctly called the trees’ fate before.
He writes:
“2016 proved to be such an up and down year that we simply didn’t have enough consecutive warm days to help the trees along – going from cold to warm to cold every few days essentially confused the trees and the buds and the sakura cherry blossoms are very delicate that if they are stuck in this cycle long enough, they just forget it and let the leaves take over instead.”
The High Park Nature Centre also said, “If they do bloom in mid-to-late May there will certainly be fewer flowers.”
Based on a quick Instagram search, it appears the flowers have started to bloom. Let’s hope Joniak is wrong.
(Photo courtesy of Peter Kudlacz via Flickr)