The Lahaina Banyan Tree Is Alive!
She has a chance to live on. Her Arborist, Steve Nimz, gave an update today.
A whole world exists in her umbrage: picnic tables, lounging benches, street lamps, walkways. Rudyard Kipling famously said that “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,” but, until last week, if you found yourself in Lahaina, you had a friend.
The Lahaina Banyan Tree is a banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis, known in Hawaiian as paniana) on Maui that was a gift to the town from missionaries in India. It was planted in Lahaina on April 24, 1873. Now 150 years old, it now covers 1.94 acres of “floor space”—and its canopy is 2/3 of an acre wide.
Taking care of the Lahaina Banyan, the largest banyan in America, is the only job that arborist Steve Nimz has ever had. On Wednesday, Nimz was allowed into the burned ruin that is Lahaina to find out if his beloved tree was still alive. Here is what he found:
Nimz says that the Lahaina Banyan has one main trunk—its original one—and 135 aerial trunks, the ones the tree drops down into the soil from its limbs. He says that all of the trunks have live tissue under the burnt outer bark.
Nimz also says that there is sap, but that the sap flow is low, likely because the tree is dehydrated right now. On the smaller limbs, leaves and fruit are still there, but they are dead. On the limbs that are from 3" to 8" in diameter, there is live fruit, and there are living leaves.
Multiple water trucks have come in to water the ground to re-hydrate the tree. Nimz says he is hoping this and other efforts will revive the tree completely and return the sap flow to its normally super high productivity.
We pass this along as the miracle it is in the midst of the implacable pain that attends the massive loss of life that Lahaina and Maui have suffered. For the people of Lahaina, especially, but for all the people of Maui, this beloved banyan is a symbol of life itself.
My writing partner Rupert L. Chapman, Ph.D. and I—along with our editor Joanne Shepherd—send all love and light to the people of Lahaina and Maui, and to this beautiful tree and its beloved arborist Steve Nimz.
Thank you. I didn't know about this tree but now that I do I'm in awe of her beauty and presence, of the significance of her survival, and of the comfort her survival offers.
My sister and I sat under that tree in around 1989 when we shared a vacation to Maui. The power of nature was exemplified by that beautiful natural miracle.
We are sending our love and energy to the people and to their monument of beauty( the tree)!