Robert Pinchott, age 12, of Rockford, Illinois, for his question:
How big is a banyan tree?
The banyan tree is a native of the Asian tropics. Its name is borrowed from the typical market place of India where merchants from afar find a shady spot to set up their tracing stalls. The reason for the name is simple. A banyan tree may be big enough to shelter thousands of busy shoppers.
When someone says that you can't see the forest for the. trees, he means that you are concentrating on single items and failing to see them as an inter related picture. Chances are, this saying did not originate in the Asian lands of the banyan tree. A stranger in these parts would more likely mistake a single tree for a small forest. In the shade of a banyan tree we stand in what seems to be a grove. All around us are tall, straight trunks. We can count hundreds and maybe thousands of them; some are mere saplings and some are thick as sturdy oaks.
At the center of the grove is a more massive trunk. maybe more than 12 feet thick an4 perhaps gnarled with age. The shady haven is roofed with a leafy canopy that begins 60 to 70 feet above our heads. The thick tropical leaves are shaped like hearts and dense enough to shade the entire area from the piercing rays of the noonday sun. If the shady grove happens to be a few hundred years old, it may be big enough to shelter several thousand people in the shade of its spreading canopy.
The trunks in this small forest are not separate trees. Every item in this shady grove belongs o0 one and the same banyan tree. Actually, it is a parent tree surrounded by thousands of still growing children.
The parent is that ancient trunk in the center. It began life like any other tree, with a tall straight trunk and a crown of spreading branches. One by one they reached the ground. Then each grew a cluster of roots that fingered their way into the ground.
The roots took in moisture from the soil and the shoots dipping down from the parent tree thrived and flourished. They thickened and grew tree trunks of their own and the tops of the trunks spread forth leafy branches. The original tree became a clump of perhaps a dozen trees, covering an area big enough to shelter a family home. But the banyan tree can grow bigger, much bigger with age. Branches from ,the first generation send shoots down into the soil and then in turn add to the spreading arms of trunks.
In time, the parent trunk may decay. But the group of secondary trunks remain healthy and the growth of the tree system continues. Our market place banyan of the city may cover almost an acre. But its sisters growing wild in the jungles may spread even farther. In spite of its odd growing habits, the banyan is a member of an otherwise normal plant family. One of its more normal cousins is the mulberry tree favored by silkworms.
The banyan grows wild in the jungles of India, Africa and the East Indies. Here bright birds roost in its leafy canopy and chattering monkeys swing among its boughs. When the parent trunk decays, it is hard to estimate those that belong to the original system. It is hard to estimate where one banyan tree ends and another begins. It is almost impossible to estimate the exact size of one of these wild banyans or the area it occupies in the jungle.