Great Banyan tree, Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic
Garden, Howrah, Kolkata
With a
Guinness Record to its credit, the 300-year-old Great Banyan is the only living
witness to the history of Kolkata. The Great Banyan Tree located in Acharya
Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, Howrah, near Kolkata, India, is
the widest tree in the world in terms of the area of the canopy it covers. It
is estimated to be about 200 to 250 years old and occupies an area of about
14,500 square meters (1.5 hectares).
With its
large number of aerial roots, the Great Banyan Tree looks more like a forest
than an individual tree. Nearly 300 years old, the tree was damaged by two
great cyclones in 1884 and 1886, when its main trunk was broken,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 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.
