The Fir of Uneyama Shrine

Every written account of this grove names the same species, and none of them names this one. The prefecture's designation record and the local descriptions of Uneyama Shrine list tsukubane oak, cedar, hinoki, koyamaki, urajiro oak and black pine. The national giant-tree register adds a Japanese fir, 3.4 metres round, health good at the survey of 2000. That is a gap rather than a contradiction: the written accounts are summaries, the prefecture counted eight specimens of five species in 1987, and a fir at the back of a precinct is exactly what a summary leaves out. It is still the only tree in this grove that a single source describes, and the entry is flagged for it. Momi is the fir of warm-temperate Japan, dark and straight, often the tallest thing on a shrine hill, and fussy about heat in a way the cool upland of Kiyotake suits. The grove was designated in December 1987 and lost trees to a typhoon four years later. Nobody has dated anything up here. If you climb the hill and count what is standing, we would like to hear it, because the last measurements on this site are a quarter of a century old.