The Fir Behind Morimasa Shrine

Japan's giant-tree register takes nothing under three metres of girth. This fir measured exactly three metres in the survey of 2000, which is to say it got in by nothing at all. Momi is the fir of warm-temperate Japan and a common shrine tree, tall and straight, and it has a habit of standing at the back of a precinct where little else does well. That is precisely where the register found this one: its own entry names the place as behind Morimasa Shrine, which is how it stays distinct from the urajiro oak recorded in the precinct in front. Two trunks, one small shrine, one stop. The survey graded it partial dieback twenty-six years ago and nothing has been published about it since, so it is the least corroborated tree on this page and the flag says as much. Momi dislikes heat and does well in the cool uplands of Fukutomi-cho, which is farm country with no station, no bus stop and few reasons for a stranger to be there beyond these two trees and the shrine they belong to. Nobody has dated it. If you get up there, tell us what is standing.