What is the oldest tree in Yakushima?
Yakushima's oldest tree is Jomon Sugi, a Japanese cedar the Ministry of the Environment puts at over 2,600 years old. Nobody can date it properly: the trunk is hollow at the centre, so every published age is an extrapolation from the outer rings inward, and the printed figures run from 1,300 to 7,200 years.
Yakusugi, the cedars of this island, rot from the inside out as they age, which is exactly why the oldest of them cannot be dated. A core sample has never reached the pith of Jomon Sugi, so its age is calculated by extending the growth rate of the outer wood inward, and small differences in that rate produce wildly different answers. The 7,200-year figure came out of early coring attempts and is largely discarded now; the Ministry of the Environment's official line is over 2,600 years. What is not in doubt is the size. It measures 16.4 metres round at chest height and 25.3 metres tall, which makes it the largest yakusugi known, and it forms part of a Special Natural Monument inside the island's World Heritage core zone. It was only found in 1966, by a postal worker, and named for the Jomon period on the strength of an age nobody could confirm. Visitors reach it on a nine to ten hour round walk from the Arakawa trailhead and view it from a wooden deck about ten metres from the trunk, because feet on its root plate were doing real damage.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.