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Cryptomeria japonica

 

Japan’s national tree, the sugi, is the oriental redwood, palpably related in its rough stringlike foliage to the sequoias and equally capable of growing to monstrous size.

I met this magnificent specimen recently in the gardens at Castle Kennedy in Galloway, in the damply temperate south west corner of Scotland. It grows in a group with its botanical relations, sequoia, sequoiadendron (the Wellingtonia), taxodium (the swamp cypress) and Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the so-called ‘dawn’ redwood from China – all rising from a giant’s salad bowl of Gunnera manicata.

Cryptomerias enjoy damp ground and can grow alarmingly fast as youngsters, forming spires almost as distinctive as wellingtonias, though thinner in the crown. This tree has a huge limb rising from low down to give it a rounder profile. The bark is as red as a redwood, but stringy rather than thick and corky.

Japan has a memorable sugi story. When the great Yeyasu Tokugawa, ruler of Japan, died in 1598 and was buried in his splendid shrine at Nikko, one of his vassals, too poor to contribute, asked permission to plant an avenue instead. It still survives: a double file of sugi lining the road to Nikko for forty miles.

 

 

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