The Zelkova of Ishiyakushi Gate

Keyaki, the Japanese name for this species, is the timber temple carpenters and drum makers reach for first, which is one reason very large ones are not common. This one was left standing. Kamigyo Ward's register measures it at 22 metres tall, with a trunk 4.29 metres around and a crown spreading 29.6 metres, which puts it among the largest zelkovas the ward has catalogued. Its age is a blank. The register records dimensions and nothing else, and no other source names this tree at all, so the measurements are what can be stated and the years are not. It grows just inside Ishiyakushi-gomon, one of nine gates in the walls that still mark out the old palace enclosure, on the Teramachi-dori side. The ground behind those walls was a district of court nobles' mansions until 1869, when the emperor moved to Tokyo and the households followed him; the plots were cleared and replanted from 1877, which is why a park in the middle of a capital city now holds trees this size at all. The zelkova sits at the opposite end of that park from the hackberry at the Demizu gate, about 1.1 kilometres away, close enough that the two mark the ends of the same walk.