Kumano no Hidarimakigaya

Split open a kaya seed anywhere in Japan and the groove down the coat runs straight. On three trees in this hamlet it spirals to the left. Kumano is where that mutation was first found and confirmed, and that, rather than size or age, is what the state designated on 12 October 1922: a remarkable naturally occurring site of a plant variant. Three such sites exist in the country. This is the original one. The monument is three separately rooted Japanese nutmeg-yews rather than one trunk. Two stand on a family's slope east of Kumano Shrine, both 21 metres tall, 1.9 and 2.4 metres round. The third, on another family's plot south of the shrine, is 23 metres and 2.2 round. A prefectural survey in 2004 found that all three had put on 50 to 60 centimetres of girth since they were measured in 1922. A fourth left-spiralling tree turned up in that original survey and its owner declined the designation over the upkeep. It is still standing, unlisted, in the same hamlet. Nobody has published an age for any of them, and the designation never asked for one. If somebody has a figure, we would take it. A stone monument marking the 1922 listing went up here in 1924, and the trees line the settlement road past the shrine, so this is a walk-the-lane visit: stay on the public road, because the plots themselves are the families'. The town bus from Hino Station takes about thirty minutes.