The Great Zelkova of Takase

Uesugi Kagekatsu began building a castle on this ground in 1600 and never finished it. The zelkova was already a large tree when the diggers arrived. It is a considerably larger one now: 10.45 metres round at chest height, 12.55 at the base, 24.64 metres tall. Those figures come from Aizuwakamatsu's own heritage record and from a specialist survey of Japan's giant trees, and they agree to the centimetre, which is rarer than it sounds. That girth puts it sixth or seventh among all the zelkovas in the country. The age, about 500 years, is an estimate nobody has checked against rings, though the abandoned castle beside it sets a floor under the figure. If it holds, this tree was standing here through the whole life of the Aizu domain and through the Boshin War that ended it. Age has cost it. Both records note large branches breaking off, repeatedly, and cracking through the trunk; a visit in 2018 found the wounds under active treatment against fungal decay. Both still describe the form as vigorous. The protection is old too. It became a National Natural Monument on 27 January 1941. A wooden boardwalk and handrail now ring it, close enough to look up into the crown and far enough out to keep feet off the roots.