What is the oldest tree in Higashimiyoshi?
Higashimiyoshi's only mapped tree, and its oldest, is the Great Camphor of Kamo (Kamo no Okusu), a camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora) roughly 1,000 years old with a trunk measured at 16.72 metres round. It stands alone in a public park on the north bank of the Yoshino River in Tokushima Prefecture, on the former site of Wakamiya Shrine.
Designated a national Natural Monument in 1926 and upgraded thirty years later to Special Natural Monument, the rarer of Japan's two tiers and held by only a small number of trees nationwide, the tree is best known for its shape rather than its size: its crown spreads 52 metres east to west and 42 metres north to south, close to a perfect circle, standing alone in flat farmland with nothing nearby to compete with it. By simple trunk girth it does not rank among Japan's largest camphors, its trunk waisted and irregular rather than a clean cylinder, but the town's own literature calls it the most beautiful tree in the country for exactly that shape. It is listed in New Japan's 100 Famous Trees and among Shikoku's 88 Views. Storms, lightning strikes and encroaching farmland thinned its crown through the mid-20th century, down from a recorded 70 metres across, before the town began buying back the surrounding fields from 1970 and replanting them as a park; the trunk measured 13 metres round in 1988 and nearly 17 by 2007. Free, with a rest house and toilet on site, about 10 to 15 minutes on foot from JR Awa-Kamo Station.
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