What is the oldest tree in Hokuto?
Hokuto's oldest mapped tree is Jindai-zakura, an Edo-higan cherry at Jisso-ji Temple traditionally estimated at 1,800 to 2,000 years old, which would make it the oldest cherry tree in Japan. The figure rests on a legend that the warrior prince Yamato Takeru planted it, repeated by tourism boards and government publications but backed by no dating method, so read it as tradition rather than measurement.
Jindai-zakura grows at Jisso-ji Temple in Yamataka, at the foot of the Southern Japan Alps. In October 1922 it was named one of Japan's first five individual National Natural Monuments, now always grouped with Miharu Takizakura and Usuzumi-zakura as the Three Great Cherry Trees. Legend credits the warrior prince Yamato Takeru with planting it, which gives its traditional age of 1,800 to 2,000 years; the hollow trunk cannot be read reliably. The measurable base, a root flare, runs 11.8 to 13.5 metres round beneath a tree only about 10 metres tall. A fourth stop, Negoya Shrine, is a car trip like the others rather than a walk between them. Two zelkovas, Tagi and Hatagi, flank its approach, both past ten metres round, a joint National Natural Monument since 1958. Takeda Shingen is said to have passed between them about five hundred years ago; a 1968 fire damaged both, and repair work roughly a decade ago restored them.
One of Hokuto's trees also appears in The Trees the World Has Written About.