Go looking for the old chinkapin at the Omiya gate and this is the tree that catches your eye. Its trunk is pale grey and smooth, shedding in long strips, and it does not so much rise as wander. It leans, twists back on itself and swells into a burl where it clears the top of the stone wall, while its roots spill over the kerb onto the path. It stands on the edge of the park, in the outer belt of woodland that the garden's own managers describe as full of big muku, hackberry and zelkova. We believe it is a muku, Aphananthe aspera, from the bark and the leaves in the one photograph we have. Nobody has measured it, dated it or put it on a register, so if you know better, or have a tape measure with you, we would like to hear from you. If it is a muku, the leaves are worth touching. They are rough enough that craftsmen once used them as sandpaper, to polish wood, horn and lacquer. In autumn it drops small black fruit that is sweet enough to eat straight from the ground. The camphor at Munakata Shrine is a few minutes' walk away.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
You can recognise it by its pale grey trunk, shedding in long strips, that twists up past the top of the stone wall into a big burl, with roots spilling over the kerb and a darker, mossy trunk right behind it.
Marutamachi Station (Kyoto Municipal Subway Karasuma Line), roughly 3 minute walk
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
