Yesterday's Find at Cypress Gardens. Photos

[Virgo10]

Yesterday I went to CG to see Brenda Lee in concert.

While she was really good (for a 60 year old, she can still sing rock and roll!!), the real find of the day was this tree. No offense Brenda.

This is a Banyan tree and, my goodness, I could hardly believe my eyes.

This thing was enormous! I didn't think I'd just fallen off the hay wagon but I never heard of a Banyan tree. After doing some research on these trees, I found this info on Wikipedia.com:

The Strangler Fig (Ficus citrifolia) is native to southern Florida, the Caribbean Islands, Central America and South America south to Paraguay.

Banyan (Ficus subgenus Urostigma) is a subgenus of many species of tropical figs with an unusual growth habit. They are large trees that usually start life as a seedling epiphytic on another tree (or on structures like buildings and bridges), where a fig-eating bird has deposited the seed. The seedling quickly develops aerial roots from the branches, which grow into full stems once they touch the ground. The original host is eventually strangled or split apart by the banyan's rapid growth, thus another common name for these trees is strangler fig.

This characteristic of developing aerial roots allows a single tree to spread over a large area. The biggest banyan tree in Pune, India is said to measure 800 m around its perimeter. Another famous banyan tree was planted in 1873 in Lahaina's Courthouse Square in Hawaii, and has grown to now cover two-thirds of an acre.

So in the photo below, the things hanging down are aerial roots which will start another segment of this one giant tree.

One more photo to give you an idea of the size of this thing. Look at the size of the people at the bottom in comparison to the tree.

Here's a few more pretty things I saw there yesterday.

Cypress Gardens just keeps getting better everytime I go.

 

[mum4jenn]

We went back in the spring and we too were amazed by those trees!!

 

[msdznyduck]

Great pix

 

[lewdyan1]

Those are beautiful photos!!!

I haven't been there in about 20 years. It's great to see it making a come back!

 

[Pooh67_68]

I always like your photos, thanks for sharing.

 

[riu girl]

Wow, thank you for sharing the photos.
It looks like a beautiful park.