Sunday Photo: Lahaina Banyan Tree

Lahaina Banyan Tree
Originally uploaded by webnelly

This very well known tree among Maui visitor and residents was planted by missionaries way back on April 24th, 1873 (Wikipedia). It is a part of Lahaina history and even their social calendar, having it's own birthday party every year hosted by the Lahaina Town Action Committee. What do you buy a tree this big for its birthday anyway?

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this tree, aside from its age, has to be its sheer size. The Wikipedia article listed above says that this banyan tree covers almost 2/3 of an acre. Wow. That makes this giant tree very, very hard to photograph. Perhaps the best way to capture the magnitude of this tree is to view it from space, as in this Google Map. That slightly orange roof building just southeast of the banyan tree is the Old Lahaina Courthouse, which is now run as the Lahaina Visitors Center. It's a fairly decent sized two-story building, but is still obviously dwarfed by the size of this tree.

It's a neat thing to see if you're in Lahaina, and very hard to miss. Hopefully for anyone shopping down Front Street it's not too far out of your way, and definitely worth seeing.