The Tsukubane Oak of Hongu Hachiman Shrine

Three of this shrine's trees are in Japan's national giant-tree register and this is the only broadleaf among them. Tsukubanegashi is an evergreen oak, so it holds a full dark crown through a Hiroshima winter while everything deciduous off the hill goes bare, and its leaves are narrow, leathery and toothed towards the tip. The national survey measured this trunk at 3.2 metres round in 2000 and recorded good health. It is one of the species the shrine's own account of its grove names, which for a register entry counts as corroboration rather than coincidence. Hongu Hachiman stands at around 400 metres in Nomi, in the upland north of the city, and it is an unusually complete site: a worship hall from 1701 listed by the council, a grove of fir, cedar, cypress and evergreen oaks protected by the prefecture, and three registered giants within a couple of minutes of each other. Nobody has put an age on any of them, which is the register's habit; it records what a tape can settle. Come by car. There is no station and no bus stop within reach, and the pin marks the district rather than the hilltop, so the last stretch is navigation by eye.