The Machilus Tree of Ono Hachiman Shrine

Three trees at this shrine were large enough for the national register. There is a black pine of 3.80 metres and a ginkgo of 3.07, and then there is this one: a tabunoki, 4.60 metres round, the biggest thing standing at Ono Hachiman. All three were measured by the Environment Ministry's giant-tree surveyors in the year 2000. On this one they left the health column empty, which is the register's way of saying nobody filled it in rather than a verdict either way. The shrine sits in Kabe-cho Katsugi, in the hills of Asakita-ku north of the city, and two searches for anything written about it came back with nothing at all, which is the ordinary condition of a rural Hachiman shrine here: known to its hamlet, recorded by the state, invisible to everybody else. A tabunoki at this girth is a serious tree. The species is a broad, dense, evergreen laurel of the warm coastal belt, and a trunk of 4.6 metres carries a crown wide enough to shade most of a small precinct. Its one flamboyant moment comes in spring, when the new growth opens bronze and red before settling to dark green. No age has been published for it and no second source describes it. If you know the shrine, help us out and we will put what you know on the page.