24 April: Banyan Trees

The Banyan Tree Birthday Party is a celebration in Lahaina Town, Hawaii in honour of a banyan tree planted there on April 24 1873 by William Owen Smith.

1. The scientific name for the Banyan tree is Ficus benghalensis. They are members of the fig family.
2. In fact, when we talk of Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves to cover their naughty bits, we get that from John Milton's Paradise Lost, where he writes that Adam and Eve made clothes from banyan leaves.
3. The word banyan derives from the Gujarati word for a merchant or trader, since merchants would often conduct their business from under the shade of these trees.
4. They are the largest trees in the world in terms of the area they cover. The largest one is in Andhra Pradesh, India, and has a a canopy of 19,107 m2. Its branches spread over 8 acres. This tree is known as Thimmamma Marrimanu, after a woman who threw herself on her husband's funeral pyre. The tree is said to have grown from one of the poles from the pyre. There is a small temple under the tree, since people believe that infertile couples will conceive a child within a year if they pray there.
5. The first European to see one and write notes about it was Alexander the Great, when he arrived in India in 326BC. Theophrastus, the founder of modern botany used those notes to inform his work.
6. Krishna stood beneath a banyan tree at Jyotisar when he delivered the sermon of the Bhagavad Gita. Hindu texts also speak of a banyan tree that grows upside down with its roots in heaven and its branches delivering blessings to humanity.
7. There are some Banyan trees growing in Hawaii, too, although they are not native there. People who have planted banyans in Hawaii include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Amelia Earhart and Louis Armstrong.
8. The banyan tree has been the national tree of India since 1950.
9. The tree appears on the coat of arms of Indonesia. Here, it symbolises the unity of Indonesia - one country with many far-flung roots. Because it is a huge tree, it also symbolises power.
10. The seeds of the banyan tree germinate in cracks on other trees, sending down roots to the ground. The roots thicken and harden and become like tree trunks. The roots suck up nutrients from the soil and as the banyan tree grows, it will eventually smother the host tree, which, after it dies will be eaten by beetles and fungi, leaving a hollow middle.

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