Himiで最も古い樹木はどれですか。
Himi maps two trees. Jonichiji no Icho, a National Natural Monument ginkgo at Jonichiji Temple twenty minutes' walk from Himi Station, is the oldest, at over a thousand years by tradition. Oidani no Otsubaki, ranked Japan's largest known specimen of wild Camellia japonica, stands in a small community graveyard at the end of the remote Oidani valley, eighteen kilometres out.
Jonichiji no Icho stands in the grounds of Jonichiji, a working Koyasan Shingon temple next to Asahiyama Park, an easy walk from the station. It became a National Natural Monument in 1926, one of the first trees in Japan ever given the designation, and local tradition credits the monk Hodo Shonin with planting it at the temple's founding in 681; taken literally that would make it over 1,300 years old, and the legend is usually rounded down to over a thousand instead. It is a female tree and a large one, roughly twelve metres round, said to be the largest female ginkgo in Japan by girth. Most autumns it drops around 180 litres of nuts, and mid-November is when its colour peaks. Oidani no Otsubaki is a different visit: the far end of a dead-end valley, an ordinary open village graveyard, three trunks grown back together into a tangle solid enough to sit on. From the station that is a 35-minute taxi, or a bus to Shimo-Iwase plus a 30-minute walk. Budget a separate trip for each tree.