In bloom
The national register credits this tree with six and a half metres of trunk.
Sweet Osmanthus
Osmanthus fragrans
Osmanthus fragrans is grown for one thing: for a few weeks each autumn, a mature tree's small flowers put out one of the strongest scents any hardy plant makes, apricot and ripe peach carried well past the tree itself. We map 4 of them, in 4 cities.
It rarely receives official protection of its own, which makes Japan's National Natural Monument osmanthus unusual. The Kinmokusei of Mishima Taisha, over 1,200 years by shrine tradition, flowers twice in the same month, early September and again two weeks later, and a 1985 assessment that gave it three years to live has been wrong for forty. At Eimeiji in Ora a typhoon felled the original in 1966, and the tree there now grew back from its stump. Kezoji's in Maebashi is the child of a famous tree that died. Caserta's, in the royal palace's English Garden, has a 6.5-metre girth made of several stems bundled together.
Caserta
Atami
A 1985 assessment gave this tree three more years to live.
Maebashi
In bloom
The tree that made this place famous is dead, and the one standing here now is its child.
Photo: さかおり (CC BY 4.0)
Ora
In bloom
A typhoon felled the original tree in 1966.
Photo: さかおり (CC BY 4.0)
Explore by city: Caserta · Leiden · Brussels · Brisbane · Munich · Lisbon · Porto · Seville · every city · or browse all species.