The Five-Colour Camellia of Byakugo-ji

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.