The pervasive spread...

It is The Big Banyan Tree (popularly called as Dod Alada Mara in local Kannada parlance) ... and its all pervasive branches, aerial roots and prop roots make somewhat a complex mesh of all these... I had known that a huge banyan tree exists at the outskirts of Bangalore and had been very keen to see it from a long time. It was today that I got the opportunity to visit it with family. And I must say it was a spectacular sight to behold. Google results claim that this tree is around 400-500 years old; but on staring at it... the way its network is spread out in 3-4 acres, it seems even older than this statistic... It is located in a very remote corner in the countryside of Bangalore en route to Mysore in a dusty village called Ramohalli. The government and tourism department has taken quite some measures to make a small bounded park out of it, laying out pavements and benches for the visitors and overall managing the ever-increasing tangles of the tree with suitable anchors :P In botany, this species is known as "Ficus Benghalensis" and such spreading of its branches and roots is characteristic of it. The branches from its main trunk have becomes vertical collections which further penetrate in the soil and develop roots; some go across horizontally climbing over neighbouring branches thus increasing the complexity of the entire network.

Citings from Wikimapia:

After the world’s biggest banyan tree at Thimmamma Marimanu near Gooty in Andhra Pradesh, the banyan tree at Botanical Gardens of Kolkata and Adyar tree at Chennai, this is the fourth largest banyan tree in India. It is believed that it is symbolic of the Hindu Trinity with the roots representing Brahma, the stems and the bark representing Vishnu and the branches symbolising Maheshwara. There is also a Shiva temple in the enclosure.

We had a nice walk alongside the barbed labyrinth of branches and prop roots. Just one view of the encompassing tree makes you look and think in awe of its massive growth from a sapling to this wide spread. We had for company a whole lot of monkeys who roam and jump freely within the enclosure and over the entire maze of the tree network... A whole lot of mosquitoes buzz their way through the labyrinth as well... The shade from the tree makes for a very cool, pleasing soiree in the evenings and we enjoyed ours as well. A little more cleanliness and maintenance of the premises in terms of leaf-gathering and planting small shrubs would improve the area a lot though. Nevertheless, I picked up a few fresh leaves of the tree as a fond reminiscence to preserve in my herbarium :)