A Cherry Tree

Winter Looms, but One Tree Dresses for Spring

Daniel Barry for The New York Times

In a warm New York December, a cherry tree at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden was in full bloom. Its breed is known, with good reason, as the everblooming cherry.

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By ANDY NEWMAN

Published: December 20, 2006

There may be no snow this holiday season, but in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a decidedly unseasonal wonder awaits: a cherry tree in full bloom.

Four months ahead of its brothers and sisters, a tree at the northeast corner of the Japanese garden pond, crowned with thousands of delicate flowers, catches the afternoon sun and flings it back out in a cloud of silvery pink.

The blossom riot is, of course, a response to a December whose average temperature is almost five degrees above normal so far, according to the National Weather Service. Do not fear, though, that there will be no magic carpet of pink petals in the garden come April.

The tree is one of a few at the garden that flowers sporadically during warm spells throughout the late fall and winter — though almost never all at once like this, an expert at the garden said. Its breed is known, in fact, as the everblooming cherry.

“This isn’t of any concern to us,” Patrick J. Cullina, the garden’s vice president for horticulture, said yesterday. “This is serendipitous. We have hundreds of other cherry trees that will flower in the spring. It’s just a nice surprise for people who happen to be here today.”

Scot D. Medbury, the garden’s president, added, “Think of it as sort of a Christmas present.”

The gift may not last long. Mark Tebbitt, the garden’s horticultural taxonomist, said that he had been monitoring the tree and that it seemed to be at its peak yesterday. Already, some of the petals were turning brown.

The tree has been helped along by its location, a sunny spot next to the pond, which reflects sunlight up at it. In a shady patch of the garden’s parking lot stands another everblooming cherry with only a sprinkling of flowers.

The tree by the pond stands in contrast not just to the other cherry trees at the garden but to the whole rest of the place, which, warm spell or not, is pretty brown these days.

“It’s really magic,” Mr. Tebbitt said. “I think because it’s just such stark winter elsewhere.”

Yesterday afternoon, Mady Hagbi walked by the tree with her husband and four of their six children. Ms. Hagbi looked up, a huge smile spreading across her face.

“I remember when I was a child,” she said, “my grandfather used to have a tree like this in his backyard with flowers in the winter.”

Her grandfather’s yard was in Tiberias, Israel. The average temperature there in December is 60 degrees, about the same as in Daytona Beach, Fla.

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