Welcher ist der älteste Baum in Morioka?

The tree stands about 15 to 20 minutes on foot from JR Morioka Station, on the public grounds in front of the district courthouse, free daily (dogs must stay outside). Legend says lightning split the boulder and a cherry seed later caught in the crack; what is measured is a trunk about 4.3 metres round where it meets the stone. Japan designated it a National Natural Monument in 1923, among the earliest trees to receive that status. In 1932 a fire reached the courthouse; a gardener, Fujimura Jitaro, wrapped the trunk in his own wet coat rather than let it burn, and it bloomed again the following spring. It flowers for roughly ten days each April, and the court adds bus parking for the crowds. It is judged to be somewhere between 350 and 420 years old, a range rather than a fixed figure. About 12 kilometres out in Ohgayu, a second National Natural Monument, a weeping katsura at Ryugen-ji temple, grows from the stump of an older tree felled for timber in 1824.