The Willow of Nakajima Park

If the estimate is right, this willow was here before Sapporo was. The Environment Ministry puts it at 200 to 300 years, and the city was laid out from 1869, so on the low end it was already a mature tree on open plain when the surveyors ran their first lines. It stands near the Minami 14-jo bridge over the Kamokamo river at the southern end of Nakajima Park, close enough to the road that the source warns drivers not to stare. It has lost its top, so it is shorter than it was, and it is still the biggest tree in a park of 24 hectares. The two authorities disagree about what it is. The park office calls it an Ezo willow, Salix rorida; the Environment Ministry's database files it as a white willow, Salix jessoensis. Nobody has settled it and the page will not pretend to. Nakajima Park is next to Susukino, Sapporo's drinking quarter, and holds a tea house designed by Kobori Enshu and the Hoheikan, the western-style hotel the Meiji colonisation office built, both national Important Cultural Properties. The willow predates them and stands beside a road full of exhaust, in good health.