The register designates this tree and then records nothing about it. No girth, no height, no condition: just an Indian banyan at Rainbow Falls, protected under Act 105 like the rest, with every measurement column left blank. So what stands here is described rather than measured. It grows along the trail that continues past the upper viewing platform above the falls, away from the crowd that stops at the railing, and it is the sprawling aerial-root kind of banyan rather than a single trunk: props coming down from the limbs and rooting where they land, which is how one of these walks slowly sideways over a century. Nobody has published an age for it either, and that is the honest state of it rather than a gap we intend to fill with arithmetic. Banyans cannot be aged from girth anyway, because the figure would be a measurement of the whole colony rather than of one stem. Wailuku River State Park is free and open from sunrise to sunset, and the falls themselves are the reason most people come. The tree is the thing you find by walking two minutes further than they do. If you know when it went in, tell us.
Wailuku River State Park (Rainbow Falls), along the trail beyond the upper viewing platform, HiloKeep walking past the upper viewing platform above the falls. The sprawling banyan with props rooting into the ground, not the falls themselves.
Free, within Wailuku River State Park, generally open sunrise to sunset. A dedicated parking area serves the falls; no public bus stop at the trailhead.
A short drive or taxi ride from downtown Hilo; the tree stands past the upper viewing platform along the park trail, an easy walk from the parking area.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.