Usuzumi-zakura (Neodani Usuzumi-zakura)

In 1948 Japan's Ministry of Education inspected this cherry and gave it three years to live. The following year a Gifu dentist named Toshiyuki Maeda spent a month working on it, cutting away 238 dying roots and grafting in new ones. By 1950 the tree had recovered. It has taken typhoons since and is still flowering. The name means pale ink. The blossom opens white and fades to a grey-tinged wash as it goes over, the colour of thin sumi ink, and that fading is as much the point as the peak. Full bloom falls in early April. Legend puts the planting around 467 CE, by Odo no Okimi, later the Emperor Keitai, before he left the Neo valley for the capital. That is where the traditional figure of about 1,500 years comes from, and a legend is not a planting record, so hold the number loosely. The measurements are firmer: a girth around 9.4 metres, a height given as 17.3, and a branch spread that Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs puts at roughly 30 metres. It was designated a National Natural Monument on 12 October 1922, the same day as Jindai-zakura and Miharu Takizakura, with which it makes up the Three Great Cherry Trees of Japan. Usuzumi Park is free and open at any hour, fifteen minutes on foot from Tarumi Station on the Tarumi Railway.