The
Great Banyan is a banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) located in Acharya
Jagadish Chandra Bose Botanical Garden, Howrah, near Kolkata,
India.
It was the widest tree in the world in terms of the area of the
canopy and is estimated to be about 200 to 250 years old. It became
diseased after it was struck by lightning, so in 1925 the middle of the
tree was excised to keep the remainder healthy; this has left it as a
clonal colony, rather than a single tree. A 330 m long road was built
around its circumference, but the tree continues to spread beyond it.
History
and DescriptionThe Great Banyan tree is over 250 years old and in
spread it is the largest known in India, perhaps in Asia. There is no
clear history of the tree, but it is mentioned in some travel books of
the nineteenth century. It was damaged by two great cyclones in 1884 and
1886, when some of its main branches were broken and exposed to the
attack of a hard fungus.
With its large number of aerial roots, The
Great Banyan looks more like a forest than an individual tree. The tree
now lives without its main trunk, which decayed and was removed in 1925.
The circumference of the original trunk was 1.7 m and from the ground
was 15.7 m. The area occupied by the tree is about 14500 square metres
(about 1.5 hectares or 4 acres). The present crown of the tree has a
circumference of about 1 kilometre and the highest branch rises to about
25 m; it has at present 2880 aerial roots reaching down to the ground.
