Annual Cherry Blossom Festival Could Be Left Without Main Attraction
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The start of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival is 12 days away. But the area's ornamental cherry trees apparently didn't get the memo.
An abnormally warm winter and early spring has goosed plants out of dormancy well ahead of schedule.
"It's definitely global weirding out there with trees blooming out of sequence to how they usually do, and kind of off the normal clock," says Mindy Maslin, who heads the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's Tree Tenders program.
Like the ornamental cherries in Fairmount Park, now in riotous bloom. Yet the weeklong Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia doesn't start until April 11, when they'll likely be past their sell-by date.
So the Japan-America Society's Aaron Dilliplane suggests you enjoy the blossoms now, and the festival later.
"There's still going to be so much more than just the trees," Dilliplane says. "We'll have Japanese food, we have a Taiko drumming group coming to perform, a J-Pop group, a lot of games and arts and crafts."
And something sure to make up for any lack of cherry blossoms, a prettiest pet in pink parade.