Shinmeisha no Oshii

The main trunk of this tree died. The tree did not. Shinmeisha no Oshii stands directly in front of the main hall of Kaminagara Shinmeisha, an evergreen chinquapin put at about a thousand years old and described as the largest of its species in Aichi Prefecture. The original stem is gone as a working trunk. What took over is two secondary trunks of roughly a metre round each, together with a crowd of suckers thrown up from the root, and both the national register and Nishio's own listing describe that growth as thriving and still extending upward. The tree is younger than itself, in the part of it you can touch. The measurements are as odd as that suggests. Twenty metres round at the roots, seven metres at chest height by the city's figure and about eight by the register's, and only eight metres tall. Wide, low and rebuilt from the base. It has been a National Natural Monument since 19 April 1932, which means the state was already protecting it while the original trunk was failing. The thousand years is an estimate and nobody has a planting record; if you know of a dating, tell us. Free, on open shrine ground, standing where anyone arriving at the hall has to look at it.