In jungles, such hollows are very desirable shelters to many animals. Such an enveloped, dead tree eventually decomposes, so that the banyan becomes a "columnar tree" with a hollow, central core. In a banyan that envelops its host tree, the mesh of roots growing around the latter eventually applies considerable pressure to and commonly kills it. Looking upward inside a strangler fig where the host tree has rotted away, leaving a hollow, columnar fig tree The topology of this massive root system inspired the name of the hierarchical computer network operating system " Banyan VINES". In some species, the prop roots develop over a considerable area that resembles a grove of trees, with every trunk connected directly or indirectly to the primary trunk. Old trees can spread laterally by using these prop roots to grow over a wide area. Older banyan trees are characterized by aerial prop roots that mature into thick, woody trunks, which can become indistinguishable from the primary trunk with age. Young leaves have an attractive reddish tinge. Like most figs, the leaf bud is covered by two large scales. The leaves of the banyan tree are large, leathery, glossy, green, and elliptical. A number of tropical banyan species that compete for sunlight, especially of the genus Ficus, exhibit this strangling habit. For this reason banyans bear the colloquial name " strangler fig". However, many seeds fall on the branches and stems of other trees or on human edifices, and when they germinate they grow roots down toward the ground and consequently may envelop part of the host tree or edifice. The seeds are small, and because most banyans grow in woodlands, a seedling that germinates on the ground is unlikely to survive. The syconium of Ficus species supply shelter and food for fig wasps and the trees depend on the fig wasps for pollination.įrugivore birds disperse the seeds of banyans.
Like other fig species, banyans bear their fruit in the form of a structure called a " syconium". "Banyan" often specifically denotes Ficus benghalensis (the "Indian banyan"), which is the national tree of India, though the name has also been generalized to denominate all figs that share a common life cycle and used systematically in taxonomy to denominate the subgenus Urostigma. a plant that grows on another plant, when its seed germinates in a crack or crevice of a host tree or edifice. ( April 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)īanyan with characteristic adventitious prop rootsĪ banyan, also spelled " banian", is a fig that begins its life as an epiphyte, i.e. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed.
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