Millennium Tree of Balete Park

You can stand inside this tree. A balete is a strangler fig: it starts life as a seed in the branches of another tree, sends roots down around its host and slowly takes its place. Here the host is long gone, and what remains is a cage of fused roots around a hollow that one visitor in 2012 reckoned would hold about fifteen people. It is billed locally as the largest balete in Asia and carries the title of the Philippines' Millennium Tree. We could not find a measurement behind either claim. The age has the same problem: about 600 years is the figure on Wikipedia, on a photographer's caption and on the travel blogs, and each of them repeats the others rather than counting anything. Treat it as tradition. If it is anywhere near right, this fig was already strangling its host before the first Spanish ships reached these islands. A blog says sixty people with linked arms could ring it, a number easier to repeat than to test. Folklore says engkanto, the spirits of Philippine tradition, live in it, and it turns up on lists of the country's haunted places. It is very much alive, photographed for iNaturalist in 2023 and reviewed online by over a thousand visitors. Expect a small entrance fee, souvenir stalls and local guides offering a walk through the roots for a little extra. Nobody has settled the species: one observer says Ficus benjamina. If you know, tell us.