Ginkgo of Inui Gate, Kyoto Gyoen

The gate this ginkgo stands at is named after a dog and a boar. Inui is the old word for northwest, written with the two zodiac animals that sat in that quarter of the compass, and Inui-gomon is the northwest corner gate of Kyoto Gyoen. The tree beside it runs to 19.5 metres, with a trunk 3.15 metres around, measured by Kamigyo Ward for its register of pride trees. That register gives no age, and no other source mentions this ginkgo, so how long it has been growing there is not known. It is the far end of the park. The camphor at Munakata Shrine and the hackberry at Demizu-guchi are down in the southwest corner, and getting here means about a kilometre and a half north on gravel, twenty minutes if nothing distracts you, past a fair share of the two hundred trees the environment ministry counts as giants on these grounds. None of that ground is old. Aristocratic households filled this rectangle until they broke up and followed their emperor east, and what went in from 1877 was deliberate parkland, which is the only reason a walled rectangle in the middle of a city carries trees on this scale. Come in the second half of November. Ginkgos go gold all at once, hold it for a matter of days, and then put the entire crown on the ground.