Chlidonias

the Giant Banyan

At the Kolkata Botanical Gardens. What you see here is one tree! It is in the Guiness Book of Records it is so big (it covers an area of 3.9 acres and has a circumference of over 450 metres). Banyans are a type of fig which send roots down from their branches to the ground, where they take hold and grow into new trunks and gradually spread outwards. The one here looks like a forest of trees because you are literally surrounded by trunks (it has 3618 prop-roots!), but they are all one tree. The original centre trunk no longer exists though, having been removed in 1925 after it was infected with fungus following some storm damage.
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At the Kolkata Botanical Gardens. What you see here is one tree! It is in the Guiness Book of Records it is so big (it covers an area of 3.9 acres and has a circumference of over 450 metres). Banyans are a type of fig which send roots down from their branches to the ground, where they take hold and grow into new trunks and gradually spread outwards. The one here looks like a forest of trees because you are literally surrounded by trunks (it has 3618 prop-roots!), but they are all one tree. The original centre trunk no longer exists though, having been removed in 1925 after it was infected with fungus following some storm damage.
 
Amazing, nearly ninety years since it lost it's original trunk it's still going strong.

I wonder, as each new section grows is it still actually the original tree? still amazing though.

It sounds like a friends garden broom he has had it over 30 years with only 3 new handles and 6 heads in all that time.:p
 
Amazing, nearly ninety years since it lost it's original trunk it's still going strong.

I wonder, as each new section grows is it still actually the original tree? still amazing though.

It sounds like a friends garden broom he has had it over 30 years with only 3 new handles and 6 heads in all that time.:p
the central trunk is gone but all parts of the tree itself still form one fully inter-connected organism. Unlike a broom all the new branches and trunks are genetically identical (more like if you could grow extra fingers and toes). I guess you would say the original trunk is gone but the tree is still there.
 
Amazing! Thanks for posting this!
 
Amazing! Thanks for posting this!
it really was amazing, one of the best things I saw in India. Although, as you can probably tell, the day I took this photo was rather torrential in precipitation!
 

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