Ficus macrophylla, commonly known as the Moreton Bay fig or Australian banyan, is a large evergreen banyan tree of the Mulberry Family (Moraceae) native to eastern Australia, from the Wide Bay–Burnett region in the north to the Illawarra in New South Wales, as well as Lord Howe Island where the subspecies F. m. columnaris is a banyan form covering 2.5 acres or more of ground. Its common name is derived from Moreton Bay in Queensland, Australia. It is best known for its imposing buttress roots.
Image: Moretonbayfigfrom 1850
Image: Starr 000501 1307 Ficus macrophylla
A Moreton Bay fig in Piazza Marina (Palermo), one of the largest in Europe. The aerial roots thicken into columns after reaching the ground.
Emergent Moreton Bay fig in situ, estimated 50 metres tall, Davis Scrub Nature Reserve, Australia
A banyan, also spelled banian, is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adjacent prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as an epiphyte, i.e. a plant that grows on another plant, when its seed germinates in a crack or crevice of a host tree or edifice. "Banyan" often specifically denotes Ficus benghalensis, which is the national tree of India, though the name has also been generalized to denominate all figs that share a common life cycle and used systematically in taxonomy to denominate the subgenus Urostigma.
Banyan
Ancient banyan tree
Ripe banyan fruits
Looking upward inside a strangler fig where the host tree has rotted away, leaving a hollow, columnar fig tree