Banyan tree

Banyan tree 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 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.