North America is graced with the presence of the oldest single tree, the oldest tree colony, the tallest tree, and the largest tree by wood volume.
But it’s India where one must go to stand beneath the world’s largest tree canopy.
At two and a half times the size of the Jefferson Memorial in DC, and four times the size of a football field, looking up at the spreading branches of Thimmamma Marrimanu, or “Thimmamma’s Banyan Tree,” isn’t possible, because they spread farther than the eye can see at any single point.
Looking at this 550-year-old member of the Ficus genus from a distance, one is likely to believe they’re looking at a grove of trees. Walking between the trunks that twist and grab like tentacles, one may actually believe they’re in a grove.
But they’d be wrong. With 4.7 acres of canopy coverage (19,000 square meters) supported by 1,000 individual trunks, Thimmamma Marrimanu is certainly one of the living wonders of the world, and deserves to be counted among the most extraordinary trees on Earth.
Just to be certain the reader has understood the scope of the tree, the sequoia tree General Sherman, the largest tree on Earth by volume, boasts a canopy coverage of just 1,487 square meters—not even one-tenth the banyan’s size.
Located in the Andhra Pradesh state in India’s southeast, its name comes from the Telugu language. Folklore tells of it sprouting from one of the poles that held up a man’s funeral pyre, onto which his wife, a 15th century woman named Thimmamma, threw herself in the act of sati.
Rather than normal trees that grow vertically from one trunk, the banyan tree spreads its limbs horizontally and drops down aerial roots to anchor these branches with new woody columns. Thimmamma Marrimanu has over 1,000 of these secondary trunks.
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Banyans are a type of strangler fig tree, which grow parasitically by sprouting from cracks and crevices in other trees, eventually consuming them and leaving a hollowed interior, which is how one can tell which of the many trunks was the original one. It likely makes a good case of being the largest parasitical organism on Earth as well.
It grows between two mountains in an agricultural field where it enjoys government protection and protection from locals who revere it.
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Banyan trees anchor local Hindu communities just as sure as they anchor natural ecosystems. The aerial roots prevent soil erosion, and the spreading canopy keeps the understory moist during the dry season. All manner of animals live in and around these trees, which Hindus consider sacred.
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