The , formerly the Asakawa Experiment Forest and sometimes also known as the Tama Botanical Park, is an arboretum

Arboretum

An arboretum in a narrow sense is a collection of trees only. Related collections include a fruticetum , and a viticetum, a collection of vines. More commonly, today, an arboretum is a botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants intended at least partly for scientific study...

 located at the foot of Mount Takao

Mount Takao

is a mountain in the city of Hachiōji, Tokyo, Japan. It is protected within Meiji no Mori Takao Quasi-National Park.Standing tall and located within an hour of downtown Tokyo, it is a popular hiking spot, with eight hiking courses and more than 2.5 million annual visitors...

, 1833-81 Todori, Hachiōji, Tokyo

Hachioji, Tokyo

is a city located in Tokyo, Japan, about 40 kilometers west of the center of the special wards of Tokyo.As of January 1, 2010, the city has an estimated population of 551,901 and a population density of 2,962.27/km². The total area is 186.31 km². It is the eighth largest city in the...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. It is open daily except Mondays; an admission fee is charged.

The site was previously a battlefield where Hojo Ujiteru

Hojo Ujiteru

' was a Japanese samurai, who was the son of Hōjō Ujiyasu and lord of Hachiōji Castle in what is now Tokyo.Ujiteru commanded a major force at the battle of Mimasetoge, where he unsuccessfully attempted to prevent Takeda Shingen from withdrawing to his home province of Kai after sieging the Hōjō's...

 fought Takeda Shingen

Takeda Shingen

, of Kai Province, was a preeminent daimyo in feudal Japan with exceptional military prestige in the late stage of the Sengoku period.-Name:Shingen was called "Tarō" or "Katsuchiyo" during his childhood...

, then placed under custody of the Tokugawa shogunate

Tokugawa shogunate

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...

. In 1921 it became an experimental station under the custody of the Forestry Management Division of the Ministry of Imperial Household. Today it is a branch laboratory of the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute.

The garden includes 13 hectares of natural forest which consists mainly of Abies firma and Pinus densiflora, and broad-leaf evergreens such as Quercus glauca and Castanopsis cuspidata

Castanopsis cuspidata

Castanopsis cuspidata is a species of Castanopsis native to southern Japan and southern Korea....

 var. sieboldii. It also contains an arboretum with about 1,000 kinds of domestic and foreign trees, including 2,000 cherry tree

Cherry Tree

Cherry Tree may refer to:* A tree that produces cherries* An ornamental cherry tree that produces cherry blossomsPlaces* Cherry Tree, Pennsylvania, a borough in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, United States* Cherry Tree, Oklahoma...

s representing 250 cherry varieties.