Tatsudayama Yaekuchinashi Habitat

Where a Double-Flowered Gardenia Grows Wild

The Tatsudayama Yaekuchinashi Habitat (立田山ヤエクチナシ自生地, Tatsudayama Yaekuchinashi Jiseichi) is a site on Mount Tatsuda in Kurokami, Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture, where the double-flowered gardenia yaekuchinashi grows wild, which in 1929 was designated a Natural Monument.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists it under the criterion for wild habitats of notable cultivated plants: a double gardenia, usually grown in gardens, found here in the wild.

Kumamoto City describes Mount Tatsuda as a hill 152 metres high northeast of the city centre, a valuable area of natural green space surviving within the city.

The Yaekuchinashi Gardenia

The designation text preserved in the Agency's database describes yaekuchinashi as a gardenia with doubled petals, growing wild alongside the ordinary single-flowered gardenia in woodland of red pine and evergreen oak on the middle slopes of Mount Tatsuda.

The text gives its scientific name as Gardenia jasminoides var. ovalifolia. Double gardenias were known as garden plants, and finding one growing naturally in woodland was the reason the site was designated.

The Site Today

Kumamoto City explains that the prefecture and city bought up the green space of Mount Tatsuda and manage it as the Tatsudayama Forest of Relaxation, a woodland for protecting the living environment. In fiscal 2007 Kumamoto Prefecture laid out four nature trails.

The city's forest diary records yaekuchinashi flowering in front of the management centre on 14 June 2022. No official survey of how many wild plants survive in the designated woodland could be found.

Visiting the Tatsudayama Yaekuchinashi Habitat

Mount Tatsuda, home to the Tatsudayama Yaekuchinashi Habitat, can be explored as the Tatsudayama Forest of Relaxation. The city's records show the gardenia in flower in mid-June.

As a Natural Monument, plants must not be picked, and visitors should stay on the paths. Enquiries go to the Tatsudayama management centre, 2-43-23 Tatsuda Jinnai, Kita Ward, Kumamoto; telephone 096-346-5090.