Yamanokami no Fuji

Two wild wisteria vines grow in the grounds of a shrine named for them: Yama-jinja, whose fuller name, Yamanokami no Fuji, means the wisteria of the mountain god. Unlike most shrine wisterias here, planted as a cultivar and trained onto a frame, these two seeded themselves and climbed on their own. The state designated the site a National Natural Monument on 31 January 1928, one of only eight climbing plants in the country with that status. The vine nearer the shrine building once measured 3.1 metres round at the root, until a typhoon damaged it badly enough that it now leans on a support structure. Its companion grows tangled into a Japanese maple on the shrine's north side and is otherwise undescribed in any source reached. Nobody has dated either vine. Wisterias do not date reliably by girth the way trees do, and no planting record survives, so the age here stays an open question rather than a guess. If you know, tell us. It is still flowering. A flower-tracking report placed it past peak bloom by 8 May 2026, recent, dated evidence that both vines are alive and doing what they have done since before anyone thought to measure them.