Banyan tree

Banyan tree (Lycium richii) at Santa Clemente Island

“...No botanist has gone over the ground of the islands so conscientiously as Mrs. Blanche Trask of Avalon, who has given a most interesting account of many pants which she found on San Clemente...but the rarest find was a species of Lycium richii. For many years one of these plants, a veritable giant, grew in the Avalon arroyo and was known as the "banyan"; by any other name it was just as rare and interesting. Thousands of people visited it, and it was famous as the only plant of the kind in the United States. It was a sort of shrine for botanists, — an extraordinary tree or bush related to the currant family, a maze of branches, — a botanical wonder that has gone the way of the aborigines whose children may have played in its deep interstices. I saw it first in 1886, and it was doubtless very old then. Mrs. Trask's discovery of one more specimen at San Clemente, Northwest Harbor, is an event, and is to be hoped that it will be preserved from the fate of the Avalon specimen.” [Holder, Charles Frederick The Channel Islands of California, 1910]

Banyan Tree remains, San Clemente Island
Photo by Nell Murbarger

“Another species, which for decades fought a losing battle with the vagaries of the dune, was Lycium richii. One specimen of this tree once grew on Catalina Island, but due to its extreme rarity, souvenir hunters avidly hacked chips from it until it fell by the wayside. This left the specimen on San Clemente standing alone, reputedly the only one of its species known in the United States. I knew of this tree's existence for nearly fifteen years before I ever saw it. Then, after making a sixteen-mile hike to the Northwest Harbor for the express purpose of viewing it, found that it had succumbed either to the elements or to advanced ago. The wood of the skeleton that remained was knotted and extremely hard. The trunk was about four feet around, and the twisted, drooping limbs covered an area of a hundred square feet, often dipping to the surface of the ground and again rising. This characteristic is responsible for its common, although erroneous, name of banyan. Further exploration revealed the stubs of many other "banyans," undoubtedly long dead but well preserved in the hot, dry climate. A considerable forest of them may have once clustered there.” [Murbarger, Nell. Plant Hunting on an Island in Nature Magazine, October 1949, (357-360).

“...The memory of a little clump of Lycium at the "Nor'-west harbor" was fresh in my mind upon my second trip last year; it looked different from usual and was of course not L. californicum, which covers vast areas to westward; both fruit and flower upon my second trip confirmed my suspicions. Miss Eastwood sends word it is none other than Lycium Richii, the only known plant in the United States being at Avalon, altbough, to be sure, it is common in Baja California...” [Trask, Blanch. Flora of San Clemente Island in Bulletin of Southern California Academy of Sciences Volume 3, January to December 1904, (p. 93)]

Banyan tree (Lycium richii) at Avalon, Santa Catalina Island

Poems and Poems of California and the West by Benjamin Franklin Ford, 1904

The Banyan Tree at Avalon, Catalina Island

Came you there by bird or billow,

Washed by wave or carried far

With some flight of sea birds, winging

Underneath the tropic star,

There to grow with gum and willow?

Banyan tree, we bless thy walking

On the isle where Avalon

Nestles in the sea-girt canyon,

Dreaming of the days long gone,

Listening to the billows breaking.

Came you from the Eastern Indies?

Of thy coming we will boast!

Came you from the fair Hawaii

Or from Persia's balmy coast,

Sacred fig tree o'er the seas?

Whence or whither was thy coming

Matters not, O Banyan tree,

Thou art sign of tropic gloaming,

Thou art rife of things to be

In this land, the end of roaming,

Where thou camest, o'er the sea,

Lone and lonely Banyan tree.

“...In Avalon, Lycium Richii forms an impenetrable arbor-like network, about one hundred feet in circumference and twenty-five feet in height. Dr. Hasse says it has grown rapidly, since he first noted it, over ten years ago. Its pale lavender flowers and small red berries are always seen on its virgate branches. The largest branches are six inches in diameter...” [ Trask, Blanche Field Notes from Santa Catalina Island in Erythea Volume VII, 1899 (p. 140)]

In the News~

July 15, 1894 [LAH]: “The banyan tree has grown to such an extent that it now measures 142 feet in circumference.”

August 4, 1895 [LAH]: “The Catalina Island banyan tree is very interesting to visitors. It is growing back of the pavilion and measures 120 feet in circumference. Its Latin name is Tichina achia.” [?]

September 17, 1896 [Marin Journal]: “...The species of currant, incorrectly called the banyan tree, at Avalon, has attracted much attention. Its arbor-like growth is so similar to that of the banyan, that it is generally known as the banyan tree.”

December 24, 1924 [TI/Avalon]: “Banyan tree at Avalon by Waldo M. York. About 1892 former Judge Waldo M. York, then Chief Deputy in the District Attorney's office, was taking his vacation at Avalon. He became interested in a tree he saw there, said to be a Banyan tree, and the only one of its kind in the United States. He thought under the circumstances the tree could not have been indigenous to the soil and hence wondered how it came to be planted here. In that spirit of inquiry, he penned these lines:

At Avalon — Our Avalon —

There is a tree — A tree alone.