Sen'nen-zakura of Butsuryuji

Most cherry trees are finished inside a century. This one is reckoned to be over 900 years old. The Sen'nen-zakura stands beside the stone steps climbing to Butsuryuji, in the Haibara district of Uda City, and Nara Prefecture calls it the largest and oldest cherry in the prefecture. The trunk is 7.7 metres round. About two metres up it breaks into eleven limbs, large and small, and the whole tree reaches 16 metres. It is a Mochizuki-zakura, a local hybrid of the mountain cherry and the Edohigan, and Edohigan is the parent behind Japan's famously long-lived cherries, which is the reason a figure like 900 is arguable at all. Take that figure as inherited rather than measured. It is the prefecture's own claim, repeated by every source we found, with nothing contradicting it and nobody showing their working. The popular name goes further: sen'nen means a thousand years, and the tree gets called a thousand-year cherry on the strength of the nickname alone. Over 900 is what the register says, so over 900 is what we print. Bloom is early to middle April, lit until nine at night. The grounds cost 200 yen, another 300 if you want the main hall, and there is a 100 yen box for the cherry's own upkeep, which at this age is not a formality.