Chujohime Seigan Zakura

In 2008 a few hundred of this tree's seeds spent eight months aboard the International Space Station. They went up with seeds from fourteen famous Japanese trees, and this one had more riding on it than most: until then, grafting had been the only reliable way to make another. At least one of the returned seeds germinated, grew and eventually flowered, which was reported in Japan as a small sensation. The reason for the fuss is the flower. An ordinary yamazakura opens five petals. This one opens twenty to thirty, pale pink and doubled, and no other tree of the cultivar is known to exist. Japan made it a National Natural Monument on 2 April 1929. Its age is a story rather than a measurement. By tradition the Nara-period princess Chujohime, fleeing her stepmother's persecution, was healed after praying to Kannon here at Ganjo-ji and planted the cherry in gratitude. That legend is where the figure of roughly 1,200 years comes from. Nobody has dated the wood. The trunk is an open question too. The city of Gifu records the tree at about nine metres tall with a trunk 31 centimetres through at chest height; a travel guide gives 8.1 metres and a full metre and a half. Those cannot both be right, so we quote neither as fact. What both agree on is that this is a slender tree for its reputation, kept going by careful hands rather than by bulk.