What looks like a dense forest on the outskirts of Kolkata, West Bengal, is actually a single tree with thousands of aerial roots known as the Big Banyan.
This remarkable organism is found in the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Botanical Garden. It is at least 250 years old and covers approximately 200,000 square feet (roughly the size of four football fields), making the Great Banyan one of the largest trees in the world. Its height is 79 feet.
Banyan trees, botanically known as ficus benghalensis, are native to India and are the national tree of India. They are commonly called “strangling figs” because they begin life by leaning against other trees, which eventually suffocate them. The forest-like visual effect is due to their aerial roots that branch towards the ground and look like individual trees. In the case of Great Banyan, it has approximately 3,600 aerial roots, or “buttress trunks.”
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Great Banyan has survived three major hurricanes. The first two were in the 1860s and resulted in the tree being infected by a fungus. The main trunk rotted, but the rest of the tree continued to grow, and the Great Banyan now survives without its 51-foot main trunk since it was removed in 1925. The third storm that hit the tree was Amphan in May. 2020 and resulted in loss of roots.
Nicknamed the “Walking Tree” because of its expanding size, the Great Banyan now grows beyond the 1,080-foot road that was once built around it. The center of the tree, where the original trunk was located, is largely inaccessible to the thousands of visitors who visit the tree each year.
In 1989, Guinness Book of World Records It was recognized as the tree with the largest canopy in the world, and the largest area spread – both records that the Great Banyan still holds.
