The Renge Pine of Renkoji

Nine metres tall and twenty-six metres wide, this pine is close to three times broader than it is high, and twenty-four wooden posts hold it that way. The branches are trained out almost horizontally, and the shape they make gave the tree its name: Rengematsu, the lotus pine, an open flower. By temple tradition it went in when Renkoji moved to this site in Kan'ei 7, which is 1630, though one account of the move dates it to 1624 instead. The information board beside the tree is careful with its wording, saying the pine is said to have been planted then rather than recorded as such, and the national giant-tree survey is vaguer still: 300 years or more. Edo-period Hiroshima thought enough of it to give it two further names. The Asano lord is said to have rated it against the famous pine of Karasaki on Lake Biwa, after which it was known as the Karasaki pine that would flee barefoot. The other name is the reclining dragon. Hiroshima Prefecture made it a Natural Monument on 23 April 1954. The trunk measures 3.2 metres round on the temple's own board and 3.5 in the national survey, an ordinary disagreement for a trunk trained this hard. The grounds are free and open, and the temple's Edo-period gate and Kannon hall stand beside it, both of which came through the 1945 bombing.