The Ohatsuki Ginkgo of Hongokuji

Legend says the monk Nichiren planted this ginkgo himself during an overnight stay in 1282, on his way through the valley that now bears his sect's temples across Minobu. That would put the tree near 750 years old, and it is tradition rather than a planting record, so the age here stays a broad estimate rather than a precise one. What is measured is the mutation. Most ginkgos carry their seeds on a stalk; this one, like only six others in all of Japan, grows them straight out of the leaf blade itself. Botanists first wrote the trait up in July 1891, and the government made the protection official in April 1929. Three of the seven nationally designated Ohatsuki ginkgos in the country stand within two kilometres of each other here in Minobu, an odd concentration nobody has fully explained. The trunk runs 5.4 metres round at chest height and 6.42 at the base, rising to a 24-metre crown with comparatively few of the milky, nipple-like growths that mark many old ginkgos. It stands between the guardian gate and the main hall of Hongokuji Temple, directly on the Nichiren pilgrim route, with its two Ohatsuki siblings close enough to visit in the same afternoon, one 750 metres north at Jotakuji and the other a further kilometre on at a shrine in Yagisawa.