The Larz Anderson Hinoki Cypress

This tree is 289 years old and it fits on a table. It was started in 1737, when Boston was still a colonial port, and it has spent every one of those years in a pot, watered and pruned by somebody, without a gap. Larz Anderson, a Harvard graduate and American ambassador to Japan, bought it from the Yokohama Nursery Company around 1913 with roughly 39 other bonsai and shipped the lot home to his estate in Brookline, where it stood on his terraces for 24 years. After he and his wife Isabel died, the collection passed to the Arnold Arboretum, which eventually built a pavilion to house it. A cutting taken in 2017 is displayed beside it, the same tree at nine years old and at 289. Two things to know before you go. The 1737 date comes from Anderson's own records rather than from any independent dating, so it is one careful line of evidence repeated by everyone since, not two. And the pavilion rotates around 30 trees through its display every two or three weeks from mid April to late October, so this particular one is not guaranteed to be out on the day you arrive; the pavilion posts what is currently on view. It is ten minutes on foot from Forest Hills, and the Arboretum around it is worth the trip whatever is in the display that week.