The Strangler Figs of the Key West Cemetery

Key West's own urban foresters have asked to cut these two trees down. The strangler figs in the city cemetery have grown so deep into the graves that the city's forestry report shows them breaking slabs and engulfing headstones, and in November 2025 removing both went on the Tree Commission's agenda. The report, by Brett Mayle and Zach Bentley of the city's urban forestry team, measured them at 96 and 53 inches across, about 2.4 and 1.35 metres. Worked out as a circle, which a strangler fig's trunk never quite is, the larger comes to roughly 7.7 metres round. It does not say how high up the trunk the tape went. The local paper calls them over a century old; there is no planting date. The cemetery was founded in 1847, after the hurricane of 1846, and a resident wrote to the commission that most of the graves beneath the figs date from the 1880s. Residents wrote in against it.The November meeting was cancelled for lack of a quorum, and by February 2026 city staff had asked for the decision to be postponed indefinitely. That is the last word we have found: no vote, and the figs still standing among the stones. No source names the species, so we give only the genus, and none says where in the 19-acre cemetery they stand, or how far apart. Our pin is the cemetery's middle, in Old Town. Entry is free. If you find them, tell us where.