h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nice trees, but I don't like the idea of strangling.

It's a magnificent tree, even if it got this big by strangling some other tree.

I've seen a whole forest that was actually only one banyan tree.

Hello Paulh and Minorvogonpoet! Strangler figs are extremely valuable to forest ecology here. Their strangling habits enable them to become bigger than almost everything else; they provide figs year-round which feed a great many critters; and after their original victim-tree has died, the hollows between the latticework of roots and stems become homes for many other critters. A large hollow strangler fig is like a huge forest apartment complex!

Paulh, over here we also have 'single-tree forests'. I've photographed one not far from here, it's somewhere in Colours of Wildlife ...

Here's the entry which (among other things) features the single-fig-tree forest:

A87901644

I love figs.

You've written edited guide entries in which you've mentioned fig trees, Willem.

I had a friend ho kept ficus trees in her apartment. Technically, these are weeping figs, though they would never get big enough to bear fruit.