Shirahatayama Hachimangu no Ohatsuki Icho

There are perhaps twenty leaf-seed ginkgos known anywhere in the world, and this is the largest of them. An ohatsuki icho carries its seeds on the margins of its leaves instead of on a stalk of their own. On this tree only about a tenth of the foliage does it, so most of the crown looks like an ordinary ginkgo and the strange leaves have to be hunted for. Ibaraki Prefecture's Board of Education, which keeps the record, says it currently shows good vitality and hangs numerous aerial rootlets from its limbs. It grows in the grounds of Shirahatayama Hachimangu in Mito, the shrine also known as Mito Hachimangu, which was built in 1707. The tree is understood to be older than the building. Its age is given as 400 to 600 years, a tradition rather than a measurement, and no source narrows it. The size is large and disputed. Both sources agree on something near 9 to 9.5 metres of circumference where the roots flare. Above that they part: about 5.8 metres round at chest height and 35 metres tall by the prefecture's account, 42 metres by Japanese Wikipedia's. That is a seven-metre argument about the top of a tree, which tells you how far up it goes. Japan protected it as a National Natural Monument in April 1929, and it is a city bus ride from Mito station, which is a short trip for the biggest of twenty.