The Kalakaua Park Banyan

Two men are credited with planting this banyan and they cannot both be right. Wikipedia and a Hilo guide both say Sheriff Luther Severance put it in at the west end of Kalakaua Park in 1882, which makes it about 144 years old. A newspaper account from 1964 credits King Kalakaua himself. Neither source settles it and this page does not pick. What is not in dispute is the size. The exceptional-tree register puts 18.6 metres around it, and that figure is not a trunk: Ficus benghalensis drops aerial roots that thicken into props, and the measurement runs around the whole buttressed mass. Standing under one is less like meeting a tree than walking into a room with a ceiling. It had a twin. When Waianuenue Avenue was widened, Sheriff George Williams had the other original moved about five miles up to Kaumana, which in 1882 terms is a remarkable thing to attempt and in any terms is a remarkable thing to survive. Hawaii protects individual trees by law, under Act 105 of 1975, and the designation attaches to the specimen rather than to the ground it stands on. This one is in the middle of downtown Hilo with a lawn under it and two more protected trees in the same small park.