The Five-Colour Camellia of Byakugo-ji
Byakugoji
You need a ticket to see this treePaid, 500 yen for adults, open 09:00 to 17:00; over 100 stone steps from the road, not step-free
One tree, five colours, and it does not drop its flowers the way a camellia is supposed to. This four hundred year old camellia opens red, white and peach blossoms on the same plant, along with striped and variegated ones, which is how it earned its name and its place among the three famous camellias of Nara. Most camellias shed the whole flower head at once, which is why the Japanese associated them with beheading and why samurai were said to dislike them; this one is a chiri-tsubaki, shedding petal by petal instead, so the ground beneath it in April is a scatter of loose colour rather than a row of fallen heads. It is only about five metres tall. The prefecture designated it a natural monument in 1957. Byakugo-ji itself sits on a hillside at the southeastern edge of the city with the whole Nara basin spread out below, which is the compensation for the climb: over a hundred stone steps stand between the bus stop and the tree, and there is no way around them.
From people who stood here
No notes yet
Did you visit the tree? Leave a note for the next visitor.
Getting there
Byakugo-ji, 392 Byakugoji-cho, Nara 630-8302
You can recognise it by its blossoms, red, white, peach, striped and variegated all on the same plant, shedding petal by petal rather than whole. It stands atop over a hundred stone steps at Byakugo-ji.
Bus from Nara station toward Takabatake, then about 10 min walk and the steps
In bloom
late March into mid-April, when one tree opens red, white and pink at once
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
