What is the oldest tree in Nihonmatsu?
The oldest tree in Nihonmatsu is Sugisawa's Great Cedar (Sugisawa no O Sugi), a Japanese cedar 10.9 metres round put at roughly 1,000 years by the city and prefecture, though one source allows for considerably less. Kohata's Great Cedar (Kohata no O Sugi), a lightning-hollowed cedar on Mt Kohata, is close behind at 780 to 800 years. Both are National Natural Monuments.
Neither age comes from counting rings. Sugisawa's cedar takes its name from 1643, when the lord of the Nihonmatsu domain, Niwa Mitsushige, stopped beneath it on an inspection tour and was struck enough to rename the village Sugisawa, a name that has held for close to four hundred years; the usual thousand-year age rests on tradition rather than a measurement, and one source allows for a considerably younger tree. It has been a National Natural Monument since 1943, kept in the best condition of Fukushima's great cedars after repair work in 1986 and 1987 and further root and soil work between 2006 and 2008. Its trunk divides into five stems from about 6.6 metres up, with a crown spreading 25 to 30 metres and a breast-height girth of 10.9 metres. Kohata's cedar had different trouble: lightning hollowed it, the cavity has since been sealed and more than ten struts now hold it upright. It stands beside the Kado Shrine building within Okitsushima Shrine on Mt Kohata, a National Natural Monument since 1941, the tenth-largest tree in Fukushima Prefecture, sources disagreeing on its exact height and girth. Reaching it means the stone stairway from the shrine's first torii.
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