It is a pity that we tend to ignore not just our cultural heritage, but also species that have a deeper relation with our roots than anything else
WHY the importance of banyan trees is being ignored in Pakistan is beyond any sane person’s imagination. Of course, other new-looking plants and trees add a lot to our general environment, but we must also try and preserve these old tropical trees that have aerial roots.
These historic trees can be found in Soonskaysur, Soan and Salt Range valleys along the country roads, water ponds, temples and shrines in our part of the globe. Banyan trees can also be tracked down alongside the G.T. Road from Lahore up to Peshawar. But noticeably, some of the really huge ones can be seen around Mandra and Rawat. “A twosome at the Mandra Police Station is 240 years old. We determine their age according to the Pressler Border Method, while all others are not less than 150 years, the ones that are found along the National Highway,” says Shaukat Ali Khan, SDO Forest, Chakwal.
The humidity factor is very important in the growth of a banyan tree since it is a known fact that one annual ring completes in one to three years’ time. Surely they can be more old than they are thought to be. It is said that a whole battalion of Alexander the Great had rested under the shadow of a banyan tree during his campaign near the Jhelum river.
In the valley of Soan (District Khushab) I saw a huge banyan tree at a shrine near village Dharar. Malik Ihsan, 55, a local gardener associated with the WWF Soan Valley Project, while quoting his great grandparents, says the tree is over 400 years old.
At public places they are protected by a circular platform of bricks and soil around them. In a representative village of Potohar and Dhan, banyans serve as community centres, where a labyrinthian system of roots and branches provides the support, shade and environment to a healthy exchange of values, stories, mythologies and traditions. The mature banyan’s canopy, which may cover an area of more than 1,000ft in diameter, is sometimes used as a marked shelter by the vendors. On sunny afternoons children can be seen swinging from the aerial roots of the tree.
The name ‘banyan’ in English seems to have been given by Europeans to a particular tree in the Persian Gulf, under which banias or members of the Indian merchant class used to assemble for worship and business. Gradually the name spread to indicate all species of this tree. From time immemorial poets and mystics have used banyans as a potent metaphor. In Bengali literature it is a symbol of the motherland.
Banyans are well-known all over Asia. The tree has aerial roots and its branches droop to the ground, take root again and produce some more twisting and trailing branches. It has smooth, shiny, rather stiff and leathery leaves, usually oval in shape. It produces flowers and fruit in abundance and every minute many of them are eaten by different kinds of birds. Although latex of the tree is very toxic, banyan is held sacred by many people with healing powers ascribed to its bark and leaves.
Like peepal, banyan is a ‘mother tree’. From vultures to parrots, a variety of birds seek refuge under its thick and well-protected canopy. Crows, doves and bats, all live side by side among its high branches.
It also provides habitat to the adapted birds like hornbill, crimson-breasted barbet, Alexandrine parakeet and green pigeons.
According to a survey conducted by students of the Kinnaird College Environment Department, the green pigeon used to be a regular visitor to the plains of Sindh and Punjab, but its number has declined due to shortage of trees preferred by it for food and shelter. These trees are mainly banyan, peepal, jamun and berri.
At present, in Lahore there are 170 banyan trees in different parts of the city and they are the major breeding sites for birds.
Its generosity towards wild life is not limited. On the trek to Pir Sohawar (near Islamabad), if one is lucky, one can see even rhesus monkeys among a series of banyan trees in the baseline forest.
Honey bees prefer to build their hives among high banyan branches. Not only in the countryside, but also in cities, there is hardly a mature banyan that is without a beehive. I have seen 25 huge golden domes at a time inside a 60-year-old banyan at the shrine of Zainul Abidin near the Chakora District Complex, Chakwal.
Being a massive personality the banyan tree has proved to be more vulnerable as compared to any other tree. In the urban areas growing demands for residential areas and using spaces for telecommunications are a serious threat to its survival. In the recent past, road alignments and their widening proved to be deadly for some historic banyans around Mandra and Rawat on the National Highway. Some of them have disappeared now, while a pair lies almost destroyed that was set on fire by the road contractors. Similarly, a few years ago, students of a seminary in Islamabad set an old banyan in a protected wooden area on fire and destroyed it, only because it was somehow associated with the Buddhists. This tree used to attract visitors and tourists from places as far as Japan and South East Asia.
In the countryside, milk that has medicinal properties, is extracted from banyans. At the shrine of Baba Zainul Abidin, I saw a 30-year-old banyan that was completely dried up because quacks were extracting milk from it on a regular basis. The custodian of the shrine Hameed Hussain says, “They get milk by hammering nails into the branches of the tree at night. Mostly they prepare compounds that cause impotency.”
The only nursery of banyans is in village Chak Shahzad near Islamabad. We should not only protect the existing banyans but must also grow more to keep our environment rich in avian bio-diversity.
It is a pity that we tend to ignore not just our cultural heritage, but also species that have a deeper relation with our roots than anything else
