The Cherry of Shogetsuji

Samurai lowered their spears to pass under this tree. The cherry grew inside Komatsu Castle, where Maeda Toshitsune had retired, and he gave it to the abbot of Shogetsuji; through the Tokugawa period a spear carried upright had to be dropped level as its bearer went beneath the branches, as a mark of respect to a tree that had come from a lord. It still leans out over the temple's earth wall into the street, which is where the custom would have applied. Very little of what you see is old. The trunk is the only ancient part, so weathered that it is hard to tell rock from bark, and almost every branch above it is new growth. It is a mountain cherry rather than one of the garden hybrids, and Kodansha's survey notes it as a form with unusually large flowers, four to five centimetres across, white washed with red, on a tree whose young leaves come out red as well. The state made it a National Natural Monument in August 1943, the same day as the chinquapins at Hirosaka. The Environment Agency once recorded its girth as 7.81 metres, which is not possible for this trunk; the figure to trust is 3.5.