The Great Ginkgo of Renko-ji

The fire took the buildings. The ginkgo stayed, and local accounts of Renko-ji have carried that ever since. It is the kind of thing ginkgos are known for: wet, heavy wood and a habit of coming back, so the tree outlasts what stands next to it. Higashi-Hiroshima lists it as a city natural monument. The national giant-tree survey recorded 5.3 metres of girth and good health; an independent Japanese catalogue of village giants gives the same 5.3 metres, and a page devoted to this tree alone gives 5.2 metres and a height of 25. Three sources within ten centimetres of each other is as close to settled as a tree measurement gets. The age is looser. The register says over three hundred years and local accounts say about four hundred, so the band on this page stays wide rather than tidy. Renko-ji is the temple of the Akitsu sake brewer Miura Senzaburo, and it sits a walk from Akitsu station on the JR Kure Line, which makes this the only one of the city's registered giants you can reach without a car. In late November it does what ginkgos do everywhere, turns the colour of brass and then drops the lot in about a week.