The Hackberry of Demizu-guchi

The crown of this tree is ten metres wider than the tree is tall. Kamigyo Ward's register of what it calls its pride trees measures the hackberry at the Demizu gate at 22.5 metres high, with a trunk 4.98 metres around and branches reaching 32.9 metres across, one of the largest hackberries the ward has on record. What nobody has recorded is its age. The register measures trees, it does not date them, and no other source puts a number on this one, so its size is the honest thing to say about it and its years are not. Kyoto Gyoen took its present shape in 1877, after the emperor's court left for Tokyo and the aristocratic quarter that filled this ground was cleared into open parkland. The environment ministry that manages the park today counts more than 200 trees on it big enough to call giants: hackberries, zelkovas, camphors and ginkgos, growing on ground that was private for most of its history and public for the last century and a half. This one stands beside Demizu-guchi, a pedestrian gate in the west wall, a short walk from the camphor at Munakata Shrine in the same southwest corner of the park. Between them they anchor a corner where several remarkable trees stand within a few minutes of each other, which is rare in a city that keeps most of its best ones an hour apart by bus.