Indian Laurel Fig

Hong Kong keeps a category of tree that almost nowhere else bothers with. This page maps every indian laurel fig on the site, 13 so far across 5 cities.

A stone wall tree grows straight out of a masonry retaining wall, roots threaded down through the joints, and the department responsible for several of them is not the one that runs the parks but the one that looks after government masonry. Twenty-seven of them line three walls on Forbes Street, and when engineers planned to extend the MTR through Kennedy Town the station was rerouted rather than the wall removed. The species is common enough that the city plants it by the thousand and almost never lets one grow old. The exception is the King Banyan in Kowloon Park, put at four hundred years and still the largest urban tree in the city after a 2007 typhoon took a third of its trunk. Eight mapped, in Hong Kong, Malaga and Seville.

Seville

The Ficus of the Pila del Pato

about 80 years · San Bartolomé, Casco Antiguo

A residents' association liked this tree enough to put it on their letterhead.

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The Fig of the Jardines de Chapina

not documented · Triana

This fig grows two trunks from one root system, 2.10 and 1.97 metres round, and Seville's 2022 survey rated its condition optimal on every measure it took: physiology, structure and plant health al...

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Malaga

Photo: rosemarydukelow (CC BY 2.0)

The Ficus Avenue of the Alameda Principal

approximately 150 years · Centro Historico

Malaga's central promenade has had three different trees in its 240-year history, and the ones standing today were themselves meant to be temporary.

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Alicante

The Fig of Paseito de Ramiro

about 80 years · Sant Roc, facing the Postiguet beach

A fig here has a crown 27 metres across, wide enough that its neighbour, growing nineteen metres away, is usually mistaken for the same tree.

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The Fig of Plaza de Navarro Rodrigo

not individually documented · Benalúa

Plaza de Navarro Rodrigo is one of Benalúa's oldest squares, laid out on land the Marqués de Benalúa donated to the city and named for the nineteenth-century politician and writer who represented A...

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The Ficus of Plaza de la Pipa

Carolinas Bajas

This ficus is one of thirteen Ficus microcarpa the city catalogues as monumental, named in a 2025 council press release that also describes the maintenance regime behind the health of these trees:...

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Hong Kong

The King Banyan of Kowloon Park

about 400 years (recognised as Hong Kong's largest urban tree in 1997) · Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon Park

A third of this banyan's trunk came down in a 2007 typhoon, and what remains is still recognised as Hong Kong's largest urban tree by trunk girth, a title the government's own tree register gave it...

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Photo: Fran1001hk (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Kam Tin Tree House

the banyan is over 100 years old; the stone ruin it engulfs is late Ming dynasty · Kam Tin, Yuen Long

Nobody agrees on what this stone house was originally for, a temple, a study hall, a family residence, but everybody agrees on why it stands empty: in 1661, the new Qing dynasty ordered Hong Kong's...

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Photo: Forz (CC BY 3.0)

The Stone Wall Trees of Forbes Street

wall dates to the 1890s; several trees individually over 100 years · Kennedy Town

When engineers first drew up plans to extend the MTR through Kennedy Town, a wall of nearly thirty banyan trees stood directly in the way, and after a 2005 flash-mob campaign by the Conservancy Ass...

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