The Great Camphor of Dazaifu

The official sign under this camphor hedges, and it has been hedging since 1924. Erected by the education ministry and still standing, it says the age is said to be a thousand years, or perhaps fifteen hundred. That is unusually careful language for a monument, and it is the honest position: one giant-tree survey puts the tree at only three hundred and something, oral tradition stretches to two thousand, and nobody has ever cored it. What is measured is the size. Twenty-eight and a half metres tall and eleven point seven metres around, it is the largest of several camphors protected together as a national natural monument on the eighth of March 1922, the same day as the two giants at Umi a few stations north. The trunk is deeply fluted and hollow at the base, which is normal at this size rather than a sign of decline. Dazaifu Tenmangu is the head shrine of the deity of learning, so in exam season the grounds fill with students, and this tree stands to the west of all of them in front of the Seishinkan.