Utsukushimori no Oyamatsutsuji

The famous thing on this hill is not the protected thing. Mt Utsukushimori, 1,542 metres on the southern foot of Yatsugatake, carries something like a thousand rengetsutsuji that colour the whole slope in June and fill everyone's photographs. Those are a different species and none of them is designated. The National Natural Monument here is one azalea, listed on 7 June 1935, and most people walk straight past it. The 1935 text tells you what to look for: a plant that divides at ground level into more than a dozen stems off a single root crown, those stems measuring about 2.7 metres round taken together, throwing a crown roughly six metres east to west and five and a half north to south. The 2.7 is a sum, not a trunk, which is worth knowing before you go up expecting something thick. Nobody recorded an age in 1935 and nobody has since, so there is no age to give. Its current vigour is a fair question too: one unverified summary says the plant has been in decline, and no source we could check repeats it. Yamanashi Prefecture still listed it as a standing monument in April 2025. It is a fifteen-minute walk up from the car park at the base, where there is a visitor centre and room for fifty cars. If you get up there and photograph the designated one rather than the hillside, send it to us.