BANYAN TREE

BANYAN TREE

Banyan tree, Indian National tree

Of extraordinary natural beauty

A tree for exuding rest and tranquility

For meetings and business providing a nice canopy

Elliptical leaves, leathery glossy green

Leaf buds covered by two large scales seen

Young leaves seen in color red

Attractive to eyes nicely spread

Seeds dispersed from host tree

By fruit eating birds you see

Into cracks and crevices, germinates

Send roots to ground to terminate.

Aerial prop roots into thick woody trunks

With age not distinguishable from main trunk

Spreads laterally, covering large area on ground

Root structures unique in reproduction found.

Tree in Calcutta two hundred fifty years old

With widest occupation of four acres land

In Acharya Jagadeesh Chandra Bose Botanical garden

World’s largest, despite lightning striking trunk Main.

A plant four feet tall in Fort Meyers Florida

Planted in USA by Thomas Alva Edison

Grown from nineteen twenty five to feet four hundred

Third largest tree in the world

Leaves chat with each other

As if patting back of one another

As they rustle in the gush of wind

It is so musical to ear you find.

In Bhagavad Gita Krishna speaks

One branch to another materialistic seek

Such one has no end for liberation

Leaves represent Vedas, seeking illuminating Sun.

K.S.V.SESHADRI