The Japanese Umbrella Pine of Uneyama Shrine

Koyamaki has no relatives. Sciadopitys verticillata is the only living species in its family, the last of a lineage that turns up in fossils across the northern hemisphere and now grows wild nowhere but Japan. This one is 3.2 metres round and was recorded in good health in the national giant-tree survey of 2000. It is also one of only two species the prefecture names outright in the record that protected this grove: the giant trees of Uneyama Shrine became a Hiroshima Prefecture natural monument on 21 December 1987, eight specimens of five species around the hall. Look at what passes for its needles and the oddity is plain. They are not needles but flattened green shoots, thick and slightly rubbery, set in whorls like the ribs of an umbrella, which is what the Japanese name describes. The wood resists water and was used for coffins and boat hulls, and the tree grows slowly enough that 3.2 metres of trunk represents a great deal of patience. Nobody has published an age. The grove lost several trees to a typhoon in 1991 and this one is still in it. The pin covers the district; the shrine sits on a low hill in Kiyotake and takes some finding.