What is the oldest tree in Kawatana?
Kawatana's mapped tree is Kawatana no Kusu no Mori (The Camphor Forest of Kawatana), a single camphor whose eighteen major limbs and 58 by 53 metre crown make it read as a small wood from a distance. It is counted among Japan's three great camphors and has stood as a National Natural Monument since 1922. Every source gives its age as over 1,000 years, with no upper figure and no stated method.
The trunk measures 11.2 metres round and the tree stands 27 metres tall, with a crown spanning 58 by 53 metres from eighteen limbs branching about five metres up the trunk, which is why it reads from a distance as a small wood rather than one tree. Japan designated it a National Natural Monument in 1922 and counts it among the country's traditionally named Three Great Camphor Trees. In July 2017 it began dying back suddenly, shedding most of its foliage in one season; the city, the prefecture and the national Agency for Cultural Affairs graded it severely poor, its roots largely rotted, from a suspected but unconfirmed cause: fill dirt laid during nearby park development, starving the roots of oxygen. Since around 2021 new shoots and green leaves have been returning, tentatively, while restoration work continues, so the base is now cordoned off and visitors view it from a short distance rather than approach the trunk. The warlord Ouchi Yoshitaka's horse Hibarige is said to be buried nearby and enshrined as a horse deity, remembered every 28 March. The tree stands about 10 minutes by taxi from Kawatana Onsen Station on the JR San-in Main Line.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.