The Camphor of Ujina Lighthouse

Two accounts of this camphor disagree about its age by more than a century and a half. One puts it at roughly 300 years. Another says only that it is over 135. Neither number is tied to a planting record, so the honest answer is that nobody has dated this tree. What has been measured is the trunk: the national giant-tree survey taped it at 5.6 metres round in 2000, and other sources give 5.5 and 5.9, which is the ordinary spread you get when people measure a fluted camphor at slightly different heights on different days. It stands at the foot of the Ujina Lighthouse in Motoujina Park, on the water at the southern edge of Minami-ku, inside the Seto Inland Sea National Park. Under either reading of its age it was already growing here when the lighthouse was built in 1950, and the two of them are now the ward's own set piece: the guided walks are advertised as the large camphor tree and the Motoujina lighthouse, in that order. Hiroshima's own ward page keeps the description short, a thick trunk and a spreading crown at the foot of the light, and confirms the coastal promenade past it is open to walkers, typhoon closures aside. The pin marks the lighthouse rather than the trunk, which puts you within a few steps. If you know when this one went in, tell us.