桜 means 'cherry tree'

These essays showcase four types of trees that afford great pleasure. The Japanese love seeing rows of them along rivers, the seashore, and avenues (especially on the world's longest tree-lined road), and people famously picnic under cherry blossoms. To the Japanese, the pine, cedar, willow, and cherry also symbolize key qualities: transience and mortality (the cherry); longevity, vitality, and sincerity (the cedar); emotional flexibility, weakness, sadness, and thinness (the willow); and superior rankings (the pine). Moreover, these trees play key roles in the arts, such as haiku, woodblock prints, ink paintings, lyrics, Noh theater, and ghost stories.