The Zelkova of Miyano Hachiman Shrine

Practically the only thing anybody has published about Miyano Hachiman Shrine is its postal code, and two of its trees are on a national register. The zelkova measures 4.57 metres round, the hackberry beside it 4.40, and both were taken down by the Environment Ministry's surveyors when they worked through Asa-cho in the year 2000. At those sizes they are a pair rather than a specimen and an also-ran. The zelkova's health was recorded as partly withered, the register's term for dieback in the crown of a tree that is otherwise alive. In an old keyaki that is close to standard. The species throws up a huge vase of a crown and then spends its last century or two shedding the top of it while the lower limbs carry on. It is Japan's great shrine and street tree, the one that roofs an approach road in leaf, and the timber temple carpenters ask for when they need a beam. Everything else is missing. Two searches turned up those postal listings and no history, so there is no age for the zelkova, and nobody has looked at its condition in the twenty six years since the survey. It stands at Miyano, near the community hall. If you go, tell us what the crown looks like now, because on this one the record has nothing more to give.