The Chichisagari Ginkgo of Nukui Hachiman Shrine

This ginkgo grows roots out of its own branches. They hang down through the crown in pale columns, a habit that only turns up on very old trees of this species, and it is where the neighbourhood name comes from: Chichisagari Icho, the milk-drop ginkgo. Hiroshima's heritage record designated it in 1979 and put its age at about 1,500 years. That number is the designation's own account rather than a ring count or a documented planting, so it is a broad guess and should be read as one: somewhere in the range of 1,200 to 1,600 years, with nobody having cored the tree to check. The trunk is either 5.25 metres round or 4.18, depending on which survey you take. The heritage record gives the larger figure, the Environment Ministry's giant-tree register gives the smaller one from its visit in 2000, and the gap is most likely the height at which each of them ran the tape, or the twenty years between the two measurements. It stands 24 metres tall, with limbs reaching nine and a half metres from east to west. The shrine sits in Kawachi, on the flat ground between the Ota and the Furukawa, two rivers with a long history of putting this district under water. Grounds are free and open in daylight. No station is within walking distance, so it is a local bus toward Kawachi or a car.