Jissoji no Icho

Ginkgos are either male or female. This one is male, and it fruits anyway. Every year a few of its smaller branches set seed in grape-like clusters. It is a documented and rare sex variation rather than an error in the record, and it is the reason Japan made the tree a National Natural Monument in December 1938. It grows in the grounds of Jissoji, a working temple at Osawa in Ichinohe, in Iwate, roughly six kilometres from the town centre. Two surveys, fourteen years apart, disagree in the usual way. In 1969 it measured 3.84 metres round at the roots, 3.05 at chest height, and about 27 metres tall. By 1983 the chest-height girth had reached 3.38 metres while the height was recorded as about 21, and Ichinohe's own page says about 25. Heights are measured from the ground by people looking upward, which is how a tree can appear to shrink by six metres in fourteen years. The 1983 survey also estimated the age at about 280 years, which puts it near 320 today. Autumn is when to come. A ginkgo turns yellow all at once and then drops the whole crown inside a few days, and this far north it happens earlier than it does in the ginkgo streets further south. The colour is not what makes this one worth the detour, though. The clusters on the smaller branches are, and somebody had to be looking closely to find them at all.