What is the oldest tree in Hokuto?
Hokuto's only 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 on the grounds of Jisso-ji Temple in Yamataka, a hamlet in the city of Hokuto at the foot of the Southern Japan Alps. In October 1922 the Japanese government named its first National Natural Monuments, and this cherry was one of only five individual trees on that inaugural list, alongside Miharu Takizakura and Usuzumi-zakura, the two trees it is now always grouped with as the Three Great Cherry Trees of Japan. The traditional age, 1,800 to 2,000 years, comes from a legend that the warrior prince Yamato Takeru planted it on his way through the region; no dating method backs the figure, and the trunk is too hollow and knotted to read reliably. What can be measured is the base, a root flare given as 11.8 to 13.5 metres round beneath a tree only about 10 metres tall, spreading outward rather than climbing. Bloom forecasters track it individually every spring, and seeds from it have reportedly been flown into space and grown on in gardens abroad.
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