The Great Cedar of Kasuga Taisha

There is a picture scroll, donated to this shrine in 1309, in which this cedar appears as a sapling. Seven centuries later it is roughly eight metres around and twenty-five tall, standing beside the hall where offerings are shared after the rituals, and the sapling in the painting is the same organism. Almost no ancient tree anywhere can be checked against its own portrait as a young plant. The better story is what grows out of its base. A second tree, a shinpaku, took root there and grew toward the neighbouring hall, and rather than cut it back somebody cut a hole in the roof and let it through. The hall still has the hole. Kasuga Taisha was founded in 768 for the deity of the Fujiwara clan and rebuilt every twenty years for centuries, so the buildings around this cedar are younger than the cedar, repeatedly. One practical note before you go: sources place the tree beside the Naoraiden near the inner gate, and it is not clear from the shrine's own pages whether that spot falls inside the free outer precinct or the paid inner one.