Tarumi-no-Ozakura

By 1993 this cherry was barely flowering. Now around 10,000 people come each April to watch it bloom. The decline set in from 1967 and ran for three decades, until treatment began in 1997, when the soil around the roots was improved and the tree was encouraged to throw out adventitious roots. By the city's 2020 survey it had recovered substantially. That survey measured it at 13.8 metres tall, 6.3 metres round at chest height and 7 metres at the root, which puts it among the ten oldest and thickest cherry trees recorded in Japan. It is an Edo Higan, the long-lived species behind most of the country's ancient cherries, and a National Natural Monument since June 1951. Before the designation it was a lord's privilege. The feudal rulers of the Izushi Domain came here for their cherry-viewing, and in 1823 the domain's Confucian scholar Sakurai Sekimon named it Sensakura, the hermit's cherry. It now stands on the Silver Wagon Road, a Japan Heritage trail across Harima. Its age is tradition rather than record. The sources say only that it is said to exceed a thousand years, and nobody has counted the rings. Getting there takes a car and then a quarter of an hour on a forest trail. In blossom week the approach road runs one way and someone sets up a temporary toilet, which tells you how many people the walk is worth to.