Yuya no Naga Fuji (the Long Wisteria of Yuya)

The kanji in this wisteria's name is usually read Kumano. Here, at Gyokoji Temple in Iwata, it is read Yuya instead, after Yuya Gozen, a court lady from a centuries-old Noh play named for her. Local legend holds she planted this vine herself in the late Heian period before leaving for Kyoto, and the reading has stuck for as long as anyone has written the tree down. It is not a mistake to correct. What has grown from that planting is now judged around 800 to 850 years old and covers a trellis that has expanded from roughly 400 square metres in 1907 to about 1,600 today, folding in the neighbouring memorial park as it spread. Its flower clusters typically reach over a metre long, with a recorded maximum of 1.5 metres and older reports of clusters twice that. Five younger wisterias on the same temple grounds carry their own separate designation, each roughly 250 years old, but this is the one the temple, the town and the festival are named for. Iwata has run an annual wisteria festival around the vine for as long as anyone has logged the date, with night illumination extending viewing hours through the mid-to-late April bloom. It has held National Natural Monument status since 1932. A wisteria old enough to outlive the play written about the woman who planted it is a tree people build a spring trip around, not one they pass without noticing.