The Twisted Muku of Omiya Gate, Kyoto Gyoen

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.