For many of us, spring officially begins when the famous cherry blossoms burst open in the nation's capital. It's an image Americans hold dear, but decorating our political arena with cherry trees was not a homegrown idea. Instead, they were a gift from the Mayor of Tokyo in 1910, and making them part of Washington's landscape was merely a matter of good politics.

And what could be more American than the story of George Washington owning up to chopping down a cherry tree? The truth is a writer named Parson Weems invented the yarn to pad the future President's reputation. With the only two references to cherries in our history being foreign or fabricated, just how American can cherries really be?

Actually, they are more American than apple pie since they were one of a handful of fruits already here for the picking when the first European explorers arrived. The bite-size treats had long been a favorite of Native Americans who used dried cherries to perk up the flavor of pemmican, an otherwise bland mixture of dried meat and fat which sustained them during their annual migrations. Colonists brought European cherries to their new home and the cross-pollination between the wild and domestic types of cherries resulted in the many varieties of the fruit growing in the United States today.

Most people don't know that cherries are one of America's more impressive crops, ranking right up there with better publicized fruits such as Florida oranges or California strawberries. We don't hear much about Traverse City, Michigan, but it happens to be the cherry capital of the world producing 70% of all sour cherries - up to 80 million pounds a year. There, along the sandy shores of Lake Michigan the cherry orchards boast 22,600 trees per square mile. That area and the sweet cherry orchards in the Pacific Northwest has allowed the U.S. to blossom into the world's leading cherry producer., and our exports satisfy the taste for cherries worldwide.

Cherries have always been considered a delicious extravagance because their season is so short, lasting less than a month in some places. Historically their brilliant but short-lived appearance inspired the old saying "life is but a cherry fair," and the yearly cherry season was marked with boisterous festivals which invited revelers to live it up while they could.

Their reputation was so special that when the famous chef, August Escoffier was asked to create a new dish in honor of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, cherries were his choice ingredient and "Cherries Jubilee" went into the history books. The regal dessert was regarded as particularly precious because it could only be savored a few months out of the year.

To this day, cherries are still very seasonal in a marketplace which can offer most other fruits year round. Because they bruise very easily, they must be picked by hand, refrigerated immediately and sold within days of picking if eaten fresh. Sixty-five percent of the American cherry crop is canned, dried or frozen, all of which are suitable for many uses in the kitchen. But like young George, I cannot tell a lie... nothing can equal the flavor of fresh cherries whether eaten raw or used in a recipe. It will be a few months before this year's crop of great American cherries is harvested, but today's glorious cherry blossoms foretell the brief sweet season ahead.

Chef Jim Coleman is the Executive Chef at Coleman Restaurant at Normandy Farm in Blue Bell, PA. Chef Jim Coleman is one of America’s only multi-media celebrity chefs, and his Flavors of America on national public television continues to be a major hit across the country.