Nantou’s twin Dragon Phoenix Waterfalls: One gentle and graceful, the other dramatic and powerful

Large quantities of spray from the waterfall are whipped up by the breeze created by the falling water, and it’s difficult to view the waterfalls (unless the stream is unusually dry) without getting buffeted by the cooling waters.

The area around the waterfalls would make an ideal picnic spot, were it not for an even better spot just a few minutes away—the Xiaonan Giant Tree Grove (肖楠巨木群). Ignore printed maps of this area, which all seem to mark the grove in the wrong place, and follow the road away from Nantou City past the car park at the trailhead to Dragon Phoenix Waterfalls for 1.1 kilometers.

Turn left here (there is a small signpost to the giant tree grove) along a narrow road uphill through woods of betel nut palms. At the junction in about 600 meters, continue straight on and leave the car or scooter in a small parking place next to the house at the end of the road a few meters further.

This little house lies in the center of a grove of Taiwan Incense Cedar (Calocedrus Formosana Florin), a rare coniferous species native only to Taiwan. This grove, planted by the Taiwan Forestry Bureau, is one of the island’s main gene-pools for the species, and small seedlings are available for sale in the house next to the grove.

Despite the name, these trees aren’t “giants” at all (they are, after all, only about seventy years old), but the grove is of great importance in keeping the species going. For the non-botanists among us, the grove simply makes a lovely slice of cool, fragrant forest, threaded with a small network of trails covered in a thick mat of springy, dried conifer leaves.

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