What is the oldest tree in Higashiagatsuma?
Higashiagatsuma's mapped tree is the Great Zelkova of Haramachi, one of the trio Japan itself names its three great zelkovas (alongside Higashine's and the already-published Great Zelkova of Mitsue). Its age is put at roughly 1,000 years, and it has been in visible decline since about 1965: hollow, propped on steel pipes, kept alive mainly by roots grown inside its own cavity.
A 1932 survey by Miyoshi Manabu, who drew up the original list of Japan's three great zelkovas, measured this tree at 16.89 metres round at the roots and 10.97 at chest height, with one limb reaching 22 metres. A 2021 survey gives 9.10 metres at chest height, a real decline rather than a different convention: branches are gone, the trunk is largely a shell, and steel pipes now carry much of the crown. Its age, roughly 1,000 years, has never been narrowed further. The tree stands in the middle of a public road junction where two Gunma prefectural roads meet, and townspeople have twice acted to protect it: in 1868 an official proposed felling it for timber for the new prefectural government building, and the plan stopped the moment the saw revealed the trunk was already hollow, with sap that looked like blood. Local tradition holds the town's streets were laid out in 1614 along a sightline between this tree and a rock formation behind Iwabitsu Castle, and the old name for zelkova, Tsukinoki, became the neighbourhood's name. A cutting from the tree grows at the town sports ground as insurance.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.