Daimyo Oak

Its broad leaves are the reason most people in Japan know the species without knowing they do: they wrap the rice cakes eaten at Children's Day, chosen because the old leaves cling on through winter and let go only when new buds push them off, read as a family line that never breaks. Sapporo's stands on the path to Hokkaido Shrine's worship hall, probably the largest of several big kashiwa on those grounds. Hiroshima's carries the same three-century age band as the giant cedar it grows beside. The oldest and strangest is Shogen-in's Sakasa Gashiwa in Shiwa, its trunk splitting into four limbs at ground level that run outward before turning up, so the branches read as roots that changed their minds; the only daimyo oak under national protection in Japan.