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Ficus microcarpa
The thumbnail crop obscures the fact that there is an ancient head from a statue of the Buddha entwined in the roots of this tree. It's been there for hundreds of years and no one knows how it got there. 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. It is widely planted as a shade tree and frequently misidentified as F. retusa or as F. nitida (syn. 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.
Wat Mahathat. Temple of the Great Relic. Ayutthaya Island in the Chao Phraya River. Growing out of the side of an old wall.
Spotted in Ayutthaya Historical Park--the ancient capital of Thailand (circa 1300) and sacked by the Burmese in the 1700s.
Spotted on Oct 8, 2017
Submitted on Jun 22, 2021
2 Comments
Neil: glad you liked it and thanks for following me. I got to travel the world on business for a few years and photographed a lot of great wildlife. But those days are over and now I live far from good places for that and can't get out as much (and not into bugs and fungus and such--haha). So long story short, I already uploaded almost all my good spottings, so if you liked my photo, suggest you check out my back catalog. I have really enjoyed so many of your spottings so keep up the good work.
Poor Buddha got his head stuck! That's an amazing tree!