Shimo-ose no Okatsura

The tree at the centre of this tree is gone. What stands at Shimo-ose is a ring of root suckers that came up around the base of a katsura whose original central stem died: more than twenty of them are over a metre round in their own right, the largest about three metres, and together the clump reaches thirty-four metres tall from a root base measuring 13.8 metres around. Saga Prefecture calls it the second-largest katsura in Japan. There is no single trunk to put a tape around. Both Saga City and the prefecture put its age at roughly a thousand years. It became a National Natural Monument in May 1962, one of the country's earlier and firmer designations. It grows inside the precinct of a mountain-god shrine in a valley in Fuji-cho, and the prefectural description says it was venerated as a sacred tree. November is the reason to make the trip. Katsura leaves are almost circular, they turn butter yellow, and as they fall and dry they give off a smell of burnt sugar that carries a surprising distance in still air. Nikkei ran a feature on this tree's autumn colour in 2023. It is not in Fukuoka. This is Fuji-cho, in Saga City, over the mountains, and it needs a car: five to ten minutes past the Mitsuse tunnel tollgate coming from the Fukuoka side, on a mountain road, with a roadside pull-off and no bus of any kind.