There is no surer sign of springtime in Portland than the arrival of the cherry blossoms. Those pink-and-white fluffs, that cotton-candy canopy—the way the rain of petals feels, as Bryan Vance put it on a recent episode of City Cast Portland, like something out of a Disney movie. It’s incredible. And fleeting.

As spring approaches, the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., and its surrounding areas come into full bloom, bursting into a spectacle of pink and white that draws more than a million visitors every year.