The Akou Tree of Narao

Japan's largest Akou tree grows two trunks instead of one, and both of them straddle the path to Narao Shrine like a gate nobody built. An Akou is a strangler fig relative, evergreen, buttressed, its roots as thick as branches on most trees. This one splits about seven metres up into two major stems, one roughly six metres round and the other seven, adding to a combined trunk circumference of 13.9 metres, the largest recorded for the species anywhere in Japan. Lower down, the roots fork the same way, forming a natural arch over the approach to the shrine. Local legend says whoever passes beneath it lives a long life. Wakayama fishermen settled this stretch of Nakadori Island in the late 16th century and prayed here for good catches and safe crossings, which is likely why a shrine grew up around a tree this size rather than the other way round. Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs made it a National Natural Monument in 1961. For an evergreen it behaves oddly: once a year, over about a week each May, the entire crown drops its leaves at once, then regrows them just as fast, so the tree goes briefly bare in a season when everything around it is green. Nakadori Island sits in the Goto archipelago, reached by ferry from Nagasaki city or Sasebo. The shrine is free and open, about ten minutes on foot from Narao port.