The Red Pine of Hongu Hachiman Shrine

Matsutake grow under trees like this one. Japan's most expensive mushroom forms almost exclusively on the roots of red pine, which is one reason akamatsu hillsides have been watched, weeded and argued over for centuries. This particular pine is 3.1 metres round, recorded in good health in the national giant-tree survey of 2000, which puts it barely over the register's three-metre threshold. It grows in the protected grove at Hongu Hachiman, a shrine at around 400 metres in Nomi whose worship hall dates from 1701 and whose grove is a prefecture natural monument. The descriptions of that grove name fir, cedar and cypress and do not single out a red pine, so this entry leans on the register more heavily than its two shrine-mates do, and it is flagged accordingly. You will not mistake it if it is there. Red pine bark breaks into plates that are genuinely orange-red high on the trunk, brighter the further up you look, where the cedars beside it are grey-brown and fibrous. No age has been published. The pin marks the centre of the district rather than the shrine, because no coordinate for this site exists in the register.