The cherry trees are safe outside of Pike Place Market — for now

The city of Seattle has postponed its plans to chop down the flowering cherry trees outside of Pike Place Market.

The two rows of flowering cherry trees have greeted market visitors with pale pink blossoms each spring, since 1980.

But the trees narrowly made it past Monday, when the city of Seattle was scheduled to start cutting them down.

The city’s Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects is redesigning the sidewalk and road on the 100 block of Pike Street, and plans to replace the 40-year-old cherry trees with Hybrid elms. It's part of the Pike Pine Streetscape and Bicycle Improvements.

But preservation activists petitioned the mayor and city council in the 11th hour, asking them to "stay the execution."

They decorated the trees with ribbons over the weekend to put their pleas on view. The ribbons hang next to a yellow sign on the tree stating it's due for removal.

"Mounting evidence suggests that these trees were gifts of friendship from Japan post war," said Ruth Danner, president of the group Save the Market Entrance.

The trees evoke the importance of the city's relationship with Japanese Americans, she explained, after so many Japanese Americans were incarcerated in the Northwest during World War II.

They represent fragile, short-lived beauty, Danner added.

"Every spring we see these beautiful cherry tree blossoms. It can't help but remind you we need to enjoy what we have while we have it."

The trees are off the chopping block today.

In a statement, officials with the city's Office of Waterfront and Civic Projects said "the removal of the trees has been temporarily postponed to listen to the perspective of community members and to fully consider their concerns."

The Office of Waterfront said they heard feedback through previous SDOT meetings that people wanted longer living trees that could eventually arch over the street.

Iris Picat, a spokesperson for the waterfront project, said that is in part why they chose elm trees.

When asked why a native Western Washington tree wasn't the preferred choice, Picat said. "We don’t have a lot of native deciduous tree choices suitable for street trees in the Pacific Northwest, unfortunately. [Hybrid elms] have been developed by the horticulture and nursery industry specifically to meet street tree standards in terms of form, foliage density, and growth rate."

If they do ultimately replace the cherry blossoms, Picat said hybrid elms would eventually arch over the street below, and frame sightlines to the Pike Place Market sign and clock, and not block the existing pedestrian lighting.

The residents put up a fight to save the flowering cherry trees as part of a larger protest of a high-rise development next to the market.

The annual cherry bloom in Seattle, meanwhile, is just a couple weeks away. Cherry blossom trees native to Japan line walkways at the University of Washington campus, drawing visitors each year, and appear in small clusters throughout the city.