The Great Banyan — remarkable tree
Biswarup Ganguly · CC BY 3.0

The Great Banyan

  • 1 min read
  • 22.561° N 88.287° E

Interesting facts

  • The original trunk, removed in 1925, is said to have measured about 15 metres across; a marker stone now stands where it grew.
  • The tree counts about 3,772 aerial roots that have reached the ground and become prop trunks.
  • The road laid around the canopy has not contained it: the tree keeps spreading beyond the ring.
  • An engraving of the Great Banyan was already published in 1794, and the tree features in travel writing from at least the nineteenth century.
  • Its highest branch rises to about 24.5 metres, roughly as tall as the Gateway of India in Mumbai.
  • The tree has come through three great cyclones, in 1864, 1867 and 2020, each of which broke off major branches.
  • Its small red fig-like fruits are edible, and birds that eat them spread banyan seedlings onto walls and buildings.

Why it is worth it

The Great Banyan of Howrah is a single tree that looks like a forest. It grows in the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden at Shibpur, across the Hooghly from Kolkata, and is believed to be at least 250 years old. A banyan (Ficus benghalensis) sends aerial roots down from its branches; when they reach the ground they thicken into new trunks, and over centuries this tree has spread into a grove of about 3,700 prop roots covering some 1.9 hectares.

The measurements are astonishing: the canopy has a circumference of about 486 metres and rises to around 24.5 metres, and in 1989 the Guinness Book of World Records listed it as the largest tree specimen in the world. What makes it stranger is that the original trunk no longer exists. Two cyclones in the 1860s damaged it, a fungal infection set in, and in 1925 the main trunk was removed. The tree lived on through its roots alone.

Walking round the tree, one moves past columns of every thickness, each of them once a hanging root. A road about 330 metres long has been laid out around the circumference, marking how far the canopy has spread. Storms still take their toll: Cyclone Amphan in 2020 broke several prop roots.

The tree belongs to the fig family, Moraceae; the botanic garden around it is named after the physicist and plant scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, and the banyan is its best-known resident.

Getting there

The garden is at Shibpur in Howrah, about 4 km from central Howrah and across the Hooghly river from Kolkata. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport (CCU) in Kolkata is about 20 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in India 90The Most Remarkable Trees 19The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests 232

From the encyclopaedia

The Great Banyan is a banyan tree located in Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, Shibpur, Howrah, near Kolkata, India. The great banyan tree draws more visitors to the garden than its collection of exotic plants from five continents. Its main trunk became infected by fungi after it was struck by two cyclones. In 1925, the main trunk was removed to keep the remainder of the tree healthy. A 330-metre-long (1,080 ft) road was built around its circumference, but the tree continues to spread beyond it.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

22.56111, 88.28667per Wikidata