The Moana Banyan

This banyan was already seven years old when somebody planted it, and it was about seven feet tall. That was 1904, and the man with the spade was Jared Smith, who ran the territory's Department of Agriculture experiment station. He put it into the seafront courtyard of the Moana hotel on Waikiki beach. It now stands around 23 metres high and throws its crown about 46 metres across, which is another way of saying the tree ate the courtyard. The courtyard is named after it. Everything that has happened in the Banyan Court for a century, and Waikiki has done a great deal of happening in that time, has happened under this tree. In 1979 it was among the first names on Hawaii's Rare and Exceptional Tree List, and it was later designated a Millennium Landmark Tree. One number here is worth distrusting. The city register gives this tree a girth of 45.7 metres, which is exactly 150 feet, which is exactly the canopy spread every other source reports. That is a mislabelled column rather than a trunk, so we have left the girth blank instead of repeating a spread as a waistline. If you have put a tape around it, tell us. The Banyan Court is open to walk through whether you are staying at the hotel or not, and the bar under the branches serves anyone.