By 1993 Tarumi-no-Ozakura was barely flowering. Root treatment brought it back, and now around 10,000 people climb a forest trail each April to watch a cherry said to exceed a thousand years bloom above the Oya River, a National Natural Monument since 1951. Three more trees have joined it since: a rare left-spiraling kaya known in only four trees nationwide, a thousand-year-plus zelkova whose hollowed trunk still holds a full crown, and a sacred cork oak on a hillside with no shrine and no gate, the tree itself the object of reverence.
0 / 4 visitados en Yabu
1
Tarumi-no-Ozakura
Edo Higan Cherry (Prunus itosakura, syn. Prunus subhirtella var. ascendens) · over 1,000 years · Oya-cho, Yabu City, roughly 20 km (mountain road, no public transport route found) from Asago, which we already publish; treated as its own single-tree place rather than joined to Asago
By 1993 this cherry was barely flowering. Now around 10,000 people come each April to watch it bloom.
The decline set in from 1967 and ran for three decades, until treatment began in 1997: the soil around the roots was improved and the tree was encouraged to throw out adventitious roots. By the city's 2020 survey it had recovered substantially. That survey measured it at 13.8 metres tall, 6.3 metres round at chest height and 7 metres at the root, which puts it among the ten oldest and thickest cherry trees recorded in Japan.
It is an Edo Higan, the long-lived species behind most of the country's ancient cherries, and a National Natural Monument since June 1951. Before the designation it was a lord's privilege: the feudal rulers of the Izushi Domain came here for their cherry-viewing, and in 1823 the domain's Confucian scholar Sakurai Sekimon named it Sensakura, the hermit's cherry. It now stands on the Silver Wagon Road, a Japan Heritage trail across Harima.
Its age is tradition rather than record. The sources say only that it is said to exceed a thousand years, and nobody has counted the rings.
Getting there takes a car and then a quarter of an hour on a forest trail. In blossom week the approach road runs one way and someone sets up a temporary toilet, which tells you how many people the walk is worth to.
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2
Takinoya no Hidarimakigaya
Japanese Nutmeg-yew, left-spiraling variety (Torreya nucifera 'Hidarimakigaya') · roughly 800 years (local estimate, not independently dated) · Noza, Yabu City, about 5.7km from Tarumi-no-Ozakura
Only four trees like this are known to exist in Japan. This Torreya's seeds spiral left, not right, a naturally occurring quirk so rare it has its own name, Hidarimakigaya, left-spiraling kaya.
It splits into two trunks about 3.7 metres up, and the split shows its age: roughly 26 metres tall, 7.35 metres round, with a root circumference of 16.5 metres and a canopy spreading 28 metres north to south. The city gives its age as roughly 800 years, a local estimate with no stated dating method behind it, so treat it as tradition rather than a measurement.
It is not fully well. The city's own record describes thinning leaf density in recent years, worst on the northern of its two trunks, where dead branches are advancing and support chains and iron braces now hold the splitting wood together. That is decline under active care, not death, and it is worth saying plainly rather than photographing around.
Designated a Hyogo Prefecture cultural property in 1938 and upgraded to a National Natural Monument in 1951, it stands in the centre of Noza, a small settlement in the Yabu hills. The city's history office lists a contact number for visit enquiries rather than open directions, worth a call ahead rather than a guarantee of an open gate.
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3
Yashiro-no-Okeyaki
Saw-leaf Zelkova (Zelkova serrata) · estimated over 1,000 years · Yashiro, Asago
When it was listed in 1928 this was called the finest zelkova in Hyogo Prefecture. It has lost about a third of its height since.
Yashiro-no-Okeyaki grows at the foot of Mount Babayama on the grounds of Ashika Shrine. The national register measured it at designation on 24 March 1928: roughly 17.6 metres round at the roots, 12.7 where the roots become trunk, 8.1 metres at a metre and a half up, and close to 30 metres tall. Only the last of those figures moved. Typhoon damage and building work on the shrine ground hollowed the trunk out, and the tree now reaches about 20 metres. The 8.1 metre girth was taken again by a Tajima heritage survey and came back the same.
Its age is put at a thousand years and some hundreds more, which is as far as anyone will commit. There is no planting record behind it, so the range stays wide here rather than being tidied into a number.
It did not get through the last century unaided. Asago carried out major restoration work in 1988 with national and prefectural money and has kept up trunk preservation since, which is why a hollow tree of this age still holds a full crown.
Free, on open shrine ground in Yashiro, about nine kilometres from the spiral-grained kaya at Takinoya.
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4
Kuchioya no O-Abemaki
Oriental Cork Oak (Quercus variabilis) · roughly 400 years · Oya-cho, Yabu City, about 0.8km from Tarumi-no-Ozakura (yab_001)
There is no shrine here, no gate and no hall. The tree is the sacred object itself.
Kuchioya no O-Abemaki grows on a mountainside behind a former school in Naka, in Oya, and the district has long treated it as a dwelling place of the gods rather than as decoration around a building. It is an abemaki, the oriental cork oak, a species whose bark thickens into deep corky ridges and which in Japan almost never reaches this size. The national register, which made it a Natural Monument on 9 June 1951, records 5.6 metres round, about 16 metres tall and an age near 400 years. Yabu's own tourism association publishes the same three figures and calls it a rare giant of its kind.
Four centuries is long enough to outlast the institutions that grow up beneath a tree. The school it stands behind is a former school now. The oak is still there.
Go prepared to walk uphill without help. There is no marked path and no confirmed parking, and nobody has put a fence or a fee between you and it. The tourism board lists it as a going concern; if you get there and find otherwise, tell us. It is 800 metres from Tarumi-no-Ozakura, which makes the pair of them one stop rather than two.
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