The Bodhi Tree of Kaidan-in

The bodhi tree of Japanese temples is not the bodhi tree. The Buddha's own species will not survive a Japanese winter, so temples here plant a lime, Tilia miqueliana, and call it by the same name, which is why this modest tree at Kaidan-in carries a title far larger than its six metres. It is protected all the same, designated a Dazaifu city natural monument in September 2013, and its age has an unusually firm floor: a gazetteer of the province compiled in 1814 records a single bodhi tree standing at Kaidan-in, so this one, or its immediate predecessor on the same ground, was already worth listing two centuries ago. Tradition connects the planting to Ganjin, the blind Chinese monk who crossed to Japan on his sixth attempt and founded the ordination platform this temple is built around. That is tradition only, and the arithmetic says so, because Ganjin died in 763 and the tree is two hundred years old. In June it flowers, pale yellow and heavily scented, which is the one week it stops being a small tree with a big name.