FABULOUS FLORIDA FLORA

" Chinese music under Banyan Trees.... "
-Steely Dan, Aja

The Banyan Tree of St. Petersburg

I found another fabulous Florida tree near the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Art. Ficus benghalensis is commonly referred to as the 'strangler fig. ' It starts life as an epiphyte, a plant that attaches itself to another.

The banyan tree may start from a seed dropped into a palm tree. It begins to send out shoots that wrap themselves around the trunk of the palm and eventually kill it. The long dangling rope-like vines you see hanging from the tree above eventually reach the ground where they take root and grow into another trunk. They keep spreading these roots and can, over time, cover an entire acre.

I saw a newspaper story of an old man whose humble little "cracker" house as they call them here was enveloped by the Banyan tree.

The banyan orginally came from India where it is considered sacred. The first Banyan tree in the U.S. was planted by Thomas Alva Edison in Fort Meyers, Florida and is one of the largest in the world.

This must've been the tree that Tarzan swung from in the jungle. It was in fact the tree that Robinson Crusoe built his home in. Brian Aldiss in his novel HOTHOUSE has the Banyan tree taking over the world when it discovers its ability to join with other tree and drop its far reaching roots.