Moon Pine, Ueno, No. 89 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

In Edo, there was a particular taste for naming trees that were distinguished by their age or their form. Pine trees, which tend to live long and grow in strange shapes, were the most common of these. The example seen here was called the Moon Pine, not only because of its full, round shape but also because one could discern various phases of the moon by looking at the tree from different angles. One twentieth-century commentary also referred to it as the Rope Pine, presumably because of its resemblance to a loop of rope.