NYC’s cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom

With so much back and forth between frigid temperatures to warmer-weathered days, it’s been a bit difficult to fully embrace spring—but if you look around the city, there are plenty of signs that winter, though technically over, is on its last leg.

One of the most telling signs, and one that many New Yorkers anxiously await each year, is the return of the city’s cherry blossoms. If you look to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s CherryWatch, you will see that a few of the beloved flowers are starting to bloom.

A species known as the Prunus sargentii, ‘Fudan-zakura’ is currently experiencing its first bloom and pretty soon, the other 25 species within the Cherry Collection at Brooklyn Botanic Garden will be following suit.

Brooklyn isn’t the only place that’s blooming cherry blossoms. In Central Park, buds on some of the park’s trees indicate that the flowers will be opening up any day now.

The New York Botanic Garden in the Bronx hasn’t updated its Cherry Tracker yet, but that may be a sign that the best is yet to come.