The Muku Tree of Kirihata Shrine

The famous tree at Kirihata Shrine is not this one. That is the great zelkova, 5.6 metres round and 28 metres tall, protected as a Hiroshima City natural monument since February 1974 together with the evergreen shii forest on the slope behind. This is the muku, three metres round, listed in the Environment Ministry's national survey of giant trees and named by nobody else at all. Aphananthe aspera is worth knowing about anyway. Its leaves dry so rough that woodworkers once used them as sandpaper on wood and horn, and it carries small dark fruit in autumn that the birds strip. It seeds easily and grows fast on good ground, which is why it ends up standing on shrine land: that is where the ground stops being turned over. Kirihata sits on a hillside about a hundred metres east of Route 2, between Seno and Nakano-higashi stations on the Sanyo main line, ten or fifteen minutes' walk from either. A giant-tree cataloguer who visited in 2017 described ordinary shrine access, which is what it is. Gate, steps, trees, no ticket, and the dark evergreen hill rising behind. The muku's age is recorded nowhere we can find. The 2000 survey took its girth and left the health column blank, and no source since has said a word about it. If you can date it, or have put a tape round it lately, we would like to hear from you.