The oldest tree in Foster Botanical Garden is older than the garden, because the man who planted it lived here first.
Kapok
Ceiba pentandra
Kapok is a rainforest giant, native to tropical lowland forest where it pushes its crown above the canopy on wide buttress roots. We map 5 of them, in 5 cities.
Chiapa de Corzo in Mexico was built around one: when the town was founded on the Grijalva river in 1528, La Pochota already stood where the plaza now sits, and its position was used to lay out the original street grid. A neighbour irritated by its fluff set part of it alight in 1945, and the scorched limb kept growing. Singapore's, at the foot of Mount Faber, has an 11.55 metre girth, among the largest trunks on the city's heritage register. Honolulu's was planted around 1851 by the physician William Hillebrand on his own homestead and is now the oldest tree in the botanical garden later built around it. Lima's holds on in a coastal desert city of grey sea fog.
Oahu
Singapore
At 11.55 metres in girth, this is one of the largest-trunked trees on Singapore's entire heritage register, rising 34.6 metres from the edge of an ordinary public car park at the foot of Mount Faber.
Rio de Janeiro
Antônio Carlos Jobim walked in this garden most mornings and stopped in front of this kapok.
Lima
This is a rainforest tree standing in a desert.
Chiapa de Corzo
Chiapa de Corzo's town square was built around this tree, not the other way round.
Photo: Wolfgang Sauber (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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