A banyan, also spelled "banian",[1] is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adventitious prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely.[2] This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as an epiphyte,[3] i.e. a plant that grows on another plant, when its seed germinates in a crack or crevice of a host tree or edifice. "Banyan" often specifically denotes Ficus benghalensis (the "Indian banyan"), which is the national tree of India,[4] though the name has also been generalized to denominate all figs that share a common life cycle and used systematically in taxonomy to denominate the subgenus Urostigma.[5]
