Ernest Henry Wilson was already home from his last expedition to Japan when he stopped at a nursery in Yokohama and bought a handful of pine seed almost as an afterthought. That seed, sown at the Arnold Arboretum in 1919, grew into the pine that now greets everyone who climbs Peters Hill Road from the Peters Hill Gate. A century of wind has done the shaping. The trunk twists rather than rises, and the lower limbs dip low before curling back up, the look Japanese gardeners spend decades training into a tree and this one simply grew into on its own. Two siblings from the same seed lot stand nearby, but the Arboretum's own account singles this one out as the largest and the most sculptural of the three. Wilson spent years in China and Japan collecting plants for Boston, and the Arboretum still tracks this pine by the same accession number, 11371*J, that a clerk wrote down when it arrived. It turned 100 in 2019 and nobody has found a reason to expect it will stop now. Every record on this tree traces back to the Arboretum itself, which keeps better books on its own collection than anyone else could. No outside account has turned up yet. If you know one, tell us.
Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Peters Hill Road, ascending from the Peters Hill Gate You can recognise it by the crooked, wind-shaped trunk and low, curling branches, unusual for a pine this size. It stands right where Peters Hill Road climbs from the Peters Hill Gate, the first big tree you meet on the way up.
Free, public arboretum, open dawn to dusk
Forest Hills MBTA station (Orange Line), roughly 15-20 minute walk via the Peters Hill Gate