The Great Kuwadisa of Tomari

Officials planted it because they were sorry to leave. The tradition recorded on this tree is specific: around two hundred years ago, men sent out from the Ryukyu government at Shuri to run the district office at Nakagusuku came to the end of their posting, and planted this tree at their parting from the villagers of Tomari they had become friendly with. It stands on the national highway where nobody can miss it, and the branches go out in a flat fan that throws a very wide, very low shade, which is what the species does and what it is planted for across the Pacific. Okinawan calls it kuwadisa; Japanese calls it kobateishi or momotamana; English usually calls it tropical almond or, in Hawaii, false kamani, which is the name this site uses for the species throughout. It is 11.5 metres tall with a trunk 3.7 metres round and the prefecture puts it at about 200 years, which matches the story it carries rather than proving it. Nakagusuku made it a village Natural Monument in March 1997, under exactly the name the village uses for it.