What is the oldest tree in Okinawa?

The oldest tree we map on Okinawa is the great akagi of Uchima in Urasoe, which the prefecture's register of notable trees puts at about 400 years. It is 18 metres tall with a trunk 4.25 metres round, it stood over the village well, and it is one of the few large trees in the south of the island that came through the Battle of Okinawa.

Okinawa's register answers this better than most, because it publishes an estimated age alongside the height and girth for each of its hundred notable trees. The oldest of the six here is the akagi at Uchima in Urasoe at about 400 years, ahead of the Shuri Kinjo grove at over 200 and the banyan at Takara at 150. But the more useful thing the register records is what happened in 1945. The Battle of Okinawa destroyed Shuri and its castle almost completely, and the prefecture's note on the Shuri Kinjo akagi says that before the war many trees of that size grew around the castle and that nearly all of them burned, leaving only a few. The Uchima entry says the same thing about that tree in one line: it is one of those that survived the ravages of the war. So an old tree in southern Okinawa is a survivor first and an old tree second, and the honest reading of the age column here is that it counts the years a tree lived through rather than the years it simply grew. Getting to Uchima: about 8 km north of central Naha in Urasoe.

Read the full story of The Great Akagi of Uchima, or see all 6 remarkable ancient trees in Okinawa.

One of Okinawa's trees also appears in The Oldest Tree in Every City We Map, a themed collection spanning several cities.

Over 3,300 old trees worth the walk

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