What is the oldest tree in Omishima?
Omishima's mapped tree is Ikiki no Gomon (The Living Gate), a camphor at Oyamazumi Shrine whose split and hollowed base forms a passage about two metres wide, three high and seven long, that worshippers walked through to reach the shrine's inner sanctuary. Its age is put at 2,000 to 3,000 years, a range that comes from two disagreeing sources rather than one measured figure.
The main trunk's circumference is eleven metres, the trunk union fifteen and a half, and the exposed root mass at ground level, the part the passage runs through, thirty two. Ages disagree by source: the standard reference work on the island gives 2,000 years, the on-site information board gives 3,000, and neither is tied to a dating method anyone can check. The tree nearly died in the Meiji era after believers stripped its bark for use as a longevity charm, and it recovered the only way a camphor can, throwing fresh growth from its own root base; that secondary trunk, four and a half metres round, now carries the crown while the original stands spent beside it. Ehime Prefecture designated it a Natural Monument in 1951, separate from the wider grove of camphors elsewhere on the shrine grounds that carries its own national designation. It stands five minutes on foot from Oyamazumi Shrine's main hall on Omishima Island, reached by car via the Shimanami Kaido or by bus from Imabari Station.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.