What is the oldest tree in Nagoya?
The oldest tree around Nagoya is the great camphor of Ota in Tokai, given a thousand years by tradition on its signboard, with a trunk 9.5 metres round. Inside Nagoya itself the oldest is the kaya in the grounds of Nagoya Castle, put at about 600 years and a National Natural Monument since 1932.
Nagoya's two age answers rest on very different things. The kaya at Nagoya Castle has 600 years on its signboard, and the number is at least anchored to a documented event: the first Owari lord, Tokugawa Yoshinao, is recorded as having eaten its nuts before marching on Osaka in 1615, so the tree was already worth eating from four hundred years ago. The thousand years given to the camphor at Ota is a tradition and nothing more, posted by Tokai's board of education with no method attached, and thousand-year claims on Japanese camphors are among the least reliable numbers in this whole register: the same figure is attached to the camphor at Atsuta Shrine, which people who have looked at it closely put nearer three hundred. What is measured is size, and the Ota tree is not in doubt at 9.5 metres round with a crown spreading 32 metres against a height of only 12. Getting there: Meitetsu to Otagawa, then about 500 metres west of the Tokai city offices.
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