Banyans usually grow on hardwood hammocks. They are considered a keystone species, essential to the hardwood tropical ...

The banyan is a kind of strangler fig tree, and unlike most plants, which grow from the ground up, it thrives when it grows from the sky down. The seed catches in the branches of another tree and ...

Some ficus species are strangler figs The seeds ... enclose their supporting or host tree which eventually dies forming a cavity inside the strangler fig The strangler fig also benefits from ...

The dying host appears to have been “strangled”, hence the name strangler fig. The dead host tree often leaves the fig with a hollow trunk when it decomposes, providing more nutrients as it ...