The Camphor of Munakata Shrine

Kyoto Gyoen, the wooded park that surrounds the old Imperial Palace, holds more than 200 trees old and large enough to be called giants by the environment ministry that manages the grounds today. This camphor, growing at Munakata Shrine in the park's southwest corner, is generally named as the single oldest and largest of them, though sources disagree on the tree's exact age by as much as two centuries, a spread wide enough that it is stated here as a range rather than a false certainty. The shrine itself dates to 795, founded when Emperor Kanmu had a protective deity brought from the original Munakata Shrine in what is now Fukuoka Prefecture to watch over the new capital at Heian-kyo, and this camphor has grown at the site for a large fraction of the park's history since. Kyoto Gyoen has been public parkland since the Meiji era moved the imperial residence to Tokyo, and its giant trees, ginkgos, zelkovas, hackberries and camphors among them, now shade a park most Kyoto residents walk through rather than one they think to visit specifically.