What appears to be almost a forest is just one banyan tree!
The Great Banyan Tree,
These are not separate trees but the connection branches to the main tree!
The path used by the visitors to walk around the tree.
Main trunk of the Great Banyan Tree in the 19th century.
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The Great Banyan Tree,
The Great Banyan is a banyan tree located in acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, near Kolkata, India. It was the tree in the world in terms of the area of the canopy and is estimated to be about 200 to 250 years old. It become diseased after it was struck by lightning. A 330m long road was built around its circumference.
Features which make it so great:-
- The Great Banyan Tree is over two hundred and fifty years old!
- Covers about 14,500 square meters of land (3.5 square acres) and continues to spread beyond, growing wider with each passing year!
- Survivor of two great cyclones in 1884 and 1886!
- The present crown of the tree has a circumference of about 1 kilometre and the highest branch rises to about 25 m and has at present 3300 aerial roots reaching down to the ground!
- It is the main attraction of the botanical garden, and till date, no one knows its exact origin and it has been showing up in guidebooks as the world's widest tree since the 1800's!
