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Chinese Banyan (Ficus cestrifolia)

Description

Ficus microcarpa, also known as Chinese banyan, Malayan banyan, Indian laurel, curtain fig, or gajumaru is a tree in the fig family Moraceae. It is native in a range from China through tropical Asia and the Caroline Islands to Australia.[4] It is widely planted as a shade tree[5] and frequently misidentified as F. retusa or as F. nitida (F. benjamina). Ficus microcarpa is a tropical tree with smooth light-gray bark and entire oblanceolate leaves about 2-2.5 inches (5–6 cm) long which in Mediterranean climates grows to about forty feet (twelve meters) tall and with an equal spread of crown. Where conditions are favorable for the banyan habit (tropical and humid subtropical) it grows much larger, producing great numbers of prop roots. The largest known specimen is "Auntie Sarah's Banyan" at the Menehune Botanical Gardens near Nawiliwili, Kauai, Hawai'i which is 110.0 feet (33.53 meters) in height, 250 feet (76.2 meters) in crown spread, and having over one thousand aerial trunks.The F. microcarpa with the thickest trunk is also in Hawai'i, at Keaau Village, Puna District, on the Big Island. Its main trunk is 28.0 feet (8.53 meters) thick at breast height. It is also 195.0 feet (59.44 meters) in limb spread.[10] Only slightly smaller is the "Banyan at Lomteuheakal" in Vanuatu, a F. microcarpa with a main trunk 27.15 feet thick (26 meters circumference). Ficus microcarpa has been described in 1782 by Carl Linnaeus the Younger. The species has a considerable number of synonyms. In 1965, E. J. H. Corner described seven varieties (and two forms of Ficus microcarpa var. microcarpa) which were regarded as synonyms under the name of Ficus microcarpa in the latest[which-] Flora Malesiana volume. Hill's weeping fig was first formally described as a species, Ficus hillii, by Frederick Manson Bailey in the Botany Bulletin of the Queensland Department of Agriculture, based on the type specimen collected in the "scrubs of tropical Queensland'".n 1965, it was reassigned by E. J .H. Corner as a variety of F. microcarpa, namely F. microcarpa var. hillii.

Taxonomic tree

  • Domain: Eukarya

    • Kingdom: Plantae

      • Phylum: Magnoliophyta

        • Class: Magnoliopsida

          • Order: Rosales

            • Family: Moraceae

              • Genus: Ficus