Kinukake no Mori, the Robe Camphor

Twenty metres around. That is nearly double the largest tree in the city of Fukuoka, and it makes this camphor one of the great trees of Japan by measurement alone, whatever anyone decides about its age. The estimates for that run from three hundred years to two thousand, a disagreement so wide it is really an admission that nobody knows. The name means the hanging of the robe: Empress Jingu, having given birth beside its neighbour a hundred metres away, is said to have hung the birth robe on this tree. A custom still runs on it. Expectant women take one of the smooth stones kept at the shrine home with them, and after a safe birth they bring back two, so the pile grows with every delivery. The tree carries its centuries openly, the upper trunk gone and a large rough cavity opening in the side, and it was still in full leaf when photographed in September 2024. Both it and its neighbour became national natural monuments on the same day in March 1922.