The Kurogane Holly of Gionnosu Park

This holly is 15 metres tall on a trunk 2.4 metres round, which for the species is close to the limit, and it stands on ground that was under water when it started. Gionnosu is reclaimed land at the mouth of the Inari River. The city made the tree preserved number 35 in March 1981 and puts it at about 130 years. What sits beside it now is Kagoshima's collection of stone bridges. Five arched stone bridges were thrown across the Kotsuki River about 150 years ago by Iwanaga Sangoro, a master mason brought in from Higo, as part of rebuilding the castle town after the domain got its finances in order. The flood of 1993 destroyed two of them. The surviving three were taken apart and re-erected here at Gionnosu, where Iwanaga himself had worked, the prefecture moving Nishida bridge into a memorial park that opened in April 2000 and the city moving Korai and Tamae bridges into this one. So a holly that has stood here since roughly the 1890s now has three nineteenth century stone arches for neighbours, all of them younger residents than it is, and none of them crossing anything.