Expressive You: [FunOnTheNet] Great Indian Banyan

 Great Indian Banyan    
The  Great Banyan is a banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) located in Acharya  Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic 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. 08 More images after the break...

 
History and Description
 The 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. Via