The hall at the centre of this grove was built in 1701 and is still standing, listed by Higashi-Hiroshima as an important cultural property.
Japanese Fir / Momi
Abies firma
Momi, the Japanese fir, is a warm-temperate species of Honshu and Kyushu that favours cool upland shrine groves and dislikes heat. We map 3 of them, in 1 city.
The old ones here grow within a few kilometres of each other in the hills around Higashi-Hiroshima, and none carries a recorded age: Japan's giant-tree register measures girth, not years. Uneyama Shrine's fir, at 3.4 metres, stands in a grove the prefecture designated in 1987 and later lost trees to a typhoon; written accounts of the grove name five other species and never this one. Hongu Hachiman's, also 3.4 metres, shares its hilltop with cedars by the dozen and a 1701 hall the city protects as an important cultural property. Ashuku Hachiman's matches them, and the one behind Morimasa Shrine measured exactly three metres in the 2000 survey, which is to say it qualified for the register by nothing at all.
Higashi-Hiroshima
Japan's giant-tree register takes nothing under three metres of girth.
A momi fir at Ashuku Hachiman Shrine measures 3.4 metres round, the only figure anyone has ever put to it.
Explore by city: Higashi-Hiroshima · Prague · Brussels · Seville · Munich · Porto · Brisbane · Lisbon · every city · or browse all species.