The Tabunoki of Hongakuji

It is in the graveyard, behind the hall, and it is 8.4 metres round. The tabunoki at Hongakuji is the biggest tree in this quarter of Kanazawa and one of the least visited, because nothing about the approach suggests there is anything back there. It divides into several trunks partway up and gathers again at the base, and the largest single stem is 6.18 metres on its own by the Environment Ministry's measurement. Standing next to it, the fact that this is the middle of a city stops being obvious. Tabunoki is an evergreen of the laurel family and a coastal tree, common along the warm shores of western Japan and nothing like this size inland; its bark was ground to make the binder in incense sticks. The temple was founded to hold a portion of the ashes and the mortuary tablet of Maeda Toshinaga, the second lord of Kaga, and it shared duty as a sect head temple with Honchoji in rotation. Nobody has published an age for the tree, and it carries no national or prefectural designation; the temple's whole grove is a Kanazawa protected woodland.