The peak bloom date for Vancouver’s location in the 2025 International Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition was April 3, eleven days later than peak bloom last year.
International Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition
“When will the cherry trees bloom in 2025?” The VCBF is once again offering up our ‘Akebono’ trees at Maple Grove Park, for the fourth year of the International Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition. More information about the challenge can be found at https://competition.statistics.gmu.edu/. The contestants have picked March 31 as the 2025 blooming date. ChatGPT has picked March 25. The race is on!
You can see photos of the blooming progression last year at Yesterday’s news – 2024 International Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition – Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival (vcbf.ca).
Photos from 2025 at Maple Grove Park
We had below freezing nights the first two weeks of February, which set what looked like an early blooming season back at least a week. Douglas Justice took our first photo on March 18, noting that the bud scales were barely cracked apart. This ‘Akebono’ tree is in the same group as we have been photographing, and is much younger than the three others we will focus on.
March 21, only three days later, even with temperatures below 10C degrees, these trees are starting to show visible florets. In the rain. Photos by Wendy Cutler.
On March 26, some blossom clusters are still at the extension of florets phase, but many are now into elongation of pedicels. Photos by Taka Naidu.
March 30. We have been focusing on the three old trees in this group of four, thinking the younger tree’s blooming might progress at a different rate, but there is no conformity to the blooming progress of those older trees either. One has flower clusters noticeably open from a distance, but just on the south side (the street side). There are plenty of flowers at the Puffy Pale Pink stage, with plenty of still dark pink buds. Daytime temperatures will be above 10C degrees this week, but nights will be cold, almost to freezing. Photos are shown here are shown tree followed by flowers of that tree. The one we call Tree 2, in the middle, has no branches at eye level, yielding hardly any photos in focus. Fortunately, its blooming progress seems intermediate between the other two old trees.
April 3. Four days later, and here we are at peak bloom. They make a peakier impression than the peak photos last year, but it was cloudy for last year’s photos. The bright sun this year shows the blossoms glowing white, but there are still buds, the flowers look fresh and there are no petals at all on the ground. The top line of photos here shows the set of trees followed by the younger tree that was included in the determination, but its photo started off the photos this year. The following rows show the flowers on the tree at the start of the row.
