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Banyan
बरगद (bargad)
India's national tree. Supported by its own prop roots, a single old banyan can keep spreading until it becomes a wood.
👀 How to recognise it
Curtains of hanging roots and a crown wider than it is tall. The leaves are thick, oval and blunt — no drip-tip, which separates it from the peepal.
Where to see it
Bengaluru
The village banyan is the meeting tree and the tree of Shiva as teacher. At Dodda Alada Mara the original main root died of disease in the 2000s, so the tree that stands now is made entirely of its own descendants.
Dodda Alada Mara (Big Banyan Tree) · Lalbagh Botanical Garden
Vrindavan
Bhandir Vat, the old banyan that gives Bhandirvan its name, is one of Braj's named trees and the place where the Radha-Krishna marriage story is set. Banyans are not felled here, which is why the oldest trees in the region stand in temple courtyards and at the ponds.
Bhandirvan (Bhandir Vat) · Gahvar Van (often)
Agra
The banyan is worshipped on Vat Savitri, when married women tie thread around the trunk. Village assemblies and markets traditionally met under one.
Ram Bagh (Aram Bagh) · Keoladeo Ghana National Park (Bharatpur)
Ajmer
On the shore of Sambhar Lake, one large banyan has held a breeding colony of cattle egrets for more than fifteen years: a fair measure of what a single old tree does in a dry landscape.
Daulat Bagh (Subhash Udyan) (often) · Ana Sagar Lake (often)
Hampi
The banyan is the tree under which Shiva teaches in silence, and village banyans are still the place where meetings are held; at Pampa Sarovar it shades a tank the Ramayana names directly.
Pampa Sarovar · Onake Kindi Prehistoric Rock Art (often)
Hyderabad
The banyan is worshipped on Vat Savitri, when married women tie thread around the trunk. Village assemblies and markets traditionally met under one.
Ananthagiri Hills · Hyderabad Botanical Garden (Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy) · KBR National Park
Kolkata
The Great Banyan sits inside the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, run by the Botanical Survey of India. Its original trunk was removed after lightning and fungus, so what stands is held up entirely by its own prop roots. The tree is thought to have been planted around 1787, and its crown now measures roughly 486 metres around.
AJC Bose Indian Botanic Garden & the Great Banyan
Mumbai
Mumbai's stock market began under a banyan: in the 1850s a handful of brokers traded beneath one in front of the Town Hall, where Horniman Circle now is, two decades before the BSE was founded in 1875.
Rani Baug · Sanjay Gandhi National Park
Pune
The banyan is worshipped on Vat Savitri, when married women tie thread around the trunk. Village assemblies and markets traditionally met under one.
Parvati Hill · Bedse Caves · Empress Botanical Garden
Ujjain
The state tree of Madhya Pradesh. Old banyans on the Shipra bank carry platforms and shrines built into their roots, which is the usual reason such trees survive in a town centre.
Naulakhi Eco Tourism Park · Shipra River and Shri Ram Ghat · Dewas Tekri (Mata Tekri)
Varanasi
The banyan is worshipped on Vat Savitri, when married women tie thread around the trunk. Village assemblies and markets traditionally met under one.
Sarnath Deer Park · Chandraprabha Wildlife Sanctuary