What is the oldest tree in Suzuka?
Suzuka's mapped tree is the Shiroko Fudan Zakura, the original type specimen (genbaku) of the Fudanzakura cherry cultivar, one of only 39 cherry trees Japan has ever designated a national natural monument, since 1923. A named cherry has stood at this exact spot since a temple record dated 757 to 765 CE, though the wood growing there today is much younger, roughly 80 years, after repeated fire and storm damage.
The tree stands in the courtyard of Koyasu Kannon-ji Temple, inside a stone-walled enclosure built in 1832, with a poem monument added in 1868. Fudanzakura means roughly ceaseless cherry: it scatters single five-petaled flowers across its branches almost continuously, pausing mainly in high summer, with documented peaks each March and again in autumn into winter, an unusual double season a Mie University study tied to unusually early September leaf drop. The site's literary record runs from a Nara-period temple mention through 16th-century renga poetry, an Edo-period Noh play, and an illustration in the 1797 guidebook Ise Sangu Meisho Zue. The current trunk is not that old: the main stem died back in 1897, storm damage struck in 1925, a temple fire took it again in 1946, and a 1959 typhoon hit, so the wood standing today is put at roughly 80 years, dating from the fire regrowth. The temple has commissioned periodic arborist checks since 2006 and ran a soil and root restoration from 2011. It is free, open temple ground, two minutes on foot from Tsuzumigaura Station on the Kintetsu Nagoya Line, and the temple still holds a memorial for the tree every 17 March.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.