The Yew of Mt Sentsu (Sentsuzan no Ichii)

Snow and wind at eleven hundred metres have flattened this yew rather than let it grow up. Where an ordinary Japanese yew reaches for height, this one spreads: about four metres tall and twenty to twenty-two metres across, a female tree grown nearly flat along the slope near Mount Sentsu's ninth station, with a male tree somewhere nearby on the trail. Age estimates run from 'several thousand years', the phrase Tottori Prefecture's own page uses, to a more specific but still legendary two thousand, the figure the tree's dedicated Wikipedia article gives while calling it tradition rather than measurement. Neither is a ring count, and nobody claims one. The mountain carries weight beyond the tree. Mount Sentsu is traditionally named as the source of the Hii River and the setting of one of Japan's best-known myths, Susanoo's slaying of the eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi in the Kojiki. A yew this strange, growing on ground with a story that old, has been a National Natural Monument since 1957. It stands on the Tottori side of the mountain, a hike rather than a walk, reached from Ikiyama Station and Route 183.