Banyan Tree

The banyan (Ficus benghalensis) is a fig tree of India that sends down aerial roots from its branches, which thicken into pillars and let a single tree spread over a vast area. It is the national tree of India.

🧬 Field Guide Specimen: Open Banyan Tree in the CRV Science Field Guide to log the specimen, see its place among the Diaphoretickes lineages in the Cladogram Explorer, and test your recall in the Red List conservation game.

Aerial roots hang from branches until they reach the soil, where they root and thicken into trunk-like supports. The largest banyans cover thousands of square meters. Many begin life as epiphytes when a bird drops a seed on a host tree, and then strangle it.

The "fruit" is actually a closed flower cluster (syconium). Each fig species is pollinated by its own species of tiny fig wasp, which enters through a pore, pollinates the flowers and lays eggs in some of them. The partnership has evolved over tens of millions of years. See Natural selection.

Figs fruit when little else does, and birds, bats, monkeys and many other animals depend on them. This makes figs keystone resources in tropical forests.

• Natural selection — coevolution of figs and wasps
• Food web — keystone fruit resources