Chinese Banyan

Ficus microcarpa
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Rosids
Order:	Rosales
Family:	Moraceae
Genus:	Ficus
Species:	F. microcarpa
Binomial name
Ficus microcarpa L.f. 1782 not Vahl 1805
Synonyms
Ficus aggregata Vahl Ficus amblyphylla (Miq.) Miq. Ficus cairnsii Warb. Ficus condaravia Buch.-Ham. Ficus dahlii K.Schum. Ficus dictyophleba F.Muell. ex Benth. Ficus dilatata Miq. Ficus dyctiophleba F.Muell. ex Miq. Ficus littoralis Blume Ficus naumannii Engl. Ficus regnans Diels Ficus retusiformis H.Lév. Ficus rubra Roth nom. illeg. Ficus thynneana F.M.Bailey Urostigma amblyphyllum Miq. Urostigma microcarpum (L. f.) Miq.

Ficus microcarpa, also known as Chinese banyan, Malayan banyan, Taiwan banyan, Indian laurel, curtain fig, or gajumaru (ガジュマル^?), is a tree native in the range from China through Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, the Malay Archipelago, New Guinea, Australia, the Ryukyu Islands, and New Caledonia. It is widely planted as a shade tree and frequently misidentified as F. retusa or as F. nitida (F. benjamina).

Ficus microcarpa is a tropical tree with smooth light-gray bark and entire oblanceolate leaves which as a non-banyan grows to about forty feet (twelve meters) tall and in spread of crown. Where conditions are favorable for the banyan habit it grows much larger, producing great numbers of prop roots. The largest known specimen is "Auntie Sarah's Banyan" at the Menehune Botanical Gardens near Nawiliwili, Kauai, Hawai'i which is 110.0 feet (33.53 meters) in height, 250 feet (76.2 meters) in crown spread, and with over one thousand aerial trunks.

Ficus microcarpa has been described in 1782 by Carl Linnaeus the Younger. The species has a considerable number of synonyms. In 1965, E. J. H. Corner described seven varieties (and two forms of Ficus microcarpa var. microcarpa) which were regarded as synonyms under the name of Ficus microcarpa in the latestFlora Malesiana volume.

Hill's weeping fig was first formally described as a species, Ficus hillii, by Frederick Manson Bailey in the Botany Bulletin of the Queensland Department of Agriculture, based on the type specimen collected in the "scrubs of tropical Queensland'". In 1965, it was reassigned by E. J .H. Corner as a variety of F. microcarpa, namely F. microcarpa var. hillii.

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Wikipedia