What is the oldest tree in Kagoshima?
The oldest tree in Kagoshima is the Akou of Yuno, a subtropical fig on the eastern flank of Sakurajima, which the city's own preserved-tree signboard dates at about 1,000 years. It stands in the hamlet of Yuno in Higashi-Sakurajima, reached by the 15-minute ferry from central Kagoshima and a local bus.
Kagoshima's ages come from an unusually concrete place. Under a 1974 ordinance the city designates individual preserved trees, records trunk circumference at 1.5 metres, height and an estimated age for each, and posts that estimate on a board at the tree. The Akou of Yuno is preserved tree number 8, and its board gives about 1,000 years, roughly three times the next oldest figure on the list. Nothing behind that number is a ring count and the city does not publish its method, so treat it as an official estimate. The Environment Ministry measured the same tree at 6.5 metres around against the city's 7.4, most likely because it recorded only the thicker of two stems that fuse a metre above the ground. If a day trip counts, an older tree stands an hour north in Aira: the Great Camphor of Kamo was already worshipped as sacred when the shrine beside it was founded in 1123. Getting to Yuno: the Sakurajima ferry runs around the clock and takes 15 minutes, then a local bus toward Higashi-Sakurajima.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.