Yashiro-no-Okeyaki
How do I find it? You can recognise it by its hollowed trunk, still carrying a full crown after 1988 restoration work, 8.1 metres round and about 20 metres tall, down from 30. It stands on Ashika Shrine's grounds at the foot of Mount Babayama.
When it was listed in 1928 this was called the finest zelkova in Hyogo Prefecture. It has lost about a third of its height since. Yashiro-no-Okeyaki grows at the foot of Mount Babayama on the grounds of Ashika Shrine. The national register measured it at designation on 24 March 1928: roughly 17.6 metres round at the roots, 12.7 where the roots become trunk, 8.1 metres at a metre and a half up, and close to 30 metres tall. Only the last of those figures moved. Typhoon damage and building work on the shrine ground hollowed the trunk out, and the tree now reaches about 20 metres. The 8.1 metre girth was taken again by a Tajima heritage survey and came back the same. Its age is put at a thousand years and some hundreds more, which is as far as anyone will commit. There is no planting record behind it, so the range stays wide here rather than being tidied into a number. It did not get through the last century unaided. Asago carried out major restoration work in 1988 with national and prefectural money and has kept up trunk preservation since, which is why a hollow tree of this age still holds a full crown. Free, on open shrine ground in Yashiro, about nine kilometres from the spiral-grained kaya at Takinoya.
- Species
- Saw-leaf Zelkova (Zelkova serrata)
- Girth
- 8.1 m
- Location
- Ashika Shrine (Ashika Jinja) grounds, at the foot of Mount Babayama, Yashiro, Asago, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan (Yashiro, Asago)
- Access
- Free, within the grounds of Ashika Shrine, open to the public.
- Getting there
- Rural Asago/Yabu border area, Hyogo Prefecture; no train or bus stop confirmed. Straight-line distance is 8.8km from Yabu's yab_002 (Takinoya no Hidarimakigaya) and 14.5km from yab_001, both closer than the 23.4km to Asago's own published tree (asg_001) in Itoi Gorge; despite the administrative address being Asago City, the geography argues for joining Yabu rather than Asago.
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Sources
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