Strangler fig

A lattice of roots twined up round where its host tree was, under a broad flat canopy wider than it is tall, roots hanging from it to the ground.

About 11 m tall out in the open. In the old forests it towers far higher: most stand two to four times that, the tallest up to nine times, and now and then an old giant stands among the rest.

Where it grows

Land	How many of the trees
Jungle	Two in five
By water in the savanna and the jungle	Half the waterside trees

Trees of a kind keep together in stands about 60 m across.

Through the year

It leafs out in spring, its bare twigs budding green first. In autumn its leaves turn butter-yellow to gold, each tree in its own time, then fall pixel by pixel until the crown is bare twigs. It stands bare through the winter. In the warm south, where it never grows cold, it keeps its leaves all year.

In play

Its trunk stops men and horses, who go round it. Wildfire leaves it black and bare, and burnt or felled ground grows back over about four years.