【Designated by the City：Natural Monument (Flora)】Plant Community in the Surrounding Area of Mae-ga and the Sacred Tree

Mai-ga is located along the northern hillside in Shimozatosoe, and it used to be a cave spring that had long been used for drinking water by the residents of western Shimozatosoe (Zaratsuki and Uzzanmi), and southern Nagama. However, because it was hard and unhygienic to take water from a spring well, people renovated it into the present vertical well in September of 1919. Although, at that time, there existed two wells, Mae-ga in the south, and Utsubara-ga in the north, only Mae-ga remains today.

As the water flow from this well was slow, and it took long to take water, people waited for their turns spinning Bu, or ramie. Therefore the well is also known as Boonmuga.
The sacred tree that with its branches and leaves over the well is a graft of a long-living Akou tree and another tree. When a branch of the tree dies, a young branch grows as if to support the old branch. This is a rare tree that has grown in such a cycle. In the surrounding area, there grows vegetation unique to the subtropics including coral trees.