The Great Zelkova of Nerima Hakusan Shrine

Six great zelkovas stood at this shrine when the Meiji era began. One is left. Two of the six were designated Natural Monuments, one above a stone stairway and one below it. The upper tree, fourteen metres tall, was designated in 1940; a typhoon split its trunk in 2016 and it had to be felled. The lower one survives, and it is the largest zelkova in Tokyo: nineteen metres tall, eight metres round, and kept going by repeated tree surgery since the early 1990s after lightning strikes and internal decay. By the shrine's own tradition both trees were planted in 1083 by the warlord Minamoto no Yoshiie, who stopped here on his way north to fight in Mutsu. That tradition is where the figure of roughly 900 years comes from, not a ring count, and the honest band is something between seven and nine and a half centuries. One caveat to carry with you. The national register entry for this shrine's zelkova records the 1940 designation, which is the date that belongs to the tree that fell, so the coordinate may mark where the dead one stood rather than the living one. The survivor is the tree below the steps.