The Banyan (Ficus Indica or Bengaliensis)—­

    The Indian tree, whose branches downward bent,
    Take root again, a boundless canopy—­

and the Peepul or Pippul (Ficus Religiosa) are amongst the finest trees in this country—­or perhaps in the world—­and on a very spacious pleasure ground or park they would present truly magnificent aspects.  Colonel Sykes alludes to a Banyan at the village of Nikow in Poonah with 68 stems descending from and supporting the branches.  This tree is said to be capable of affording shelter to 20,000 men.  It is a tree of this sort which Milton so well describes.

    The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned,
    But such as at this day, to Indians known
    In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms
    Branching so broad and long, a pillared shade,
    High over arched, and echoing walks between
    There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
    Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
    At loop holes cut through the thickest shade those leaves,
    They gathered, broad as Amazonian taige;
    And with what skill they had together sewed,
    To gird their waste.

Milton is mistaken as to the size of the leaves of this tree, though he has given its general character with great exactness.[123]

A remarkable banyan or buri tree, near Manjee, twenty miles west of Patna, is 375 inches in diameter, the circumference of its shadow at noon measuring 1116 feet.  It has sixty stems, or dropped branches that have taken root.  Under this tree once sat a naked fakir who had occupied that situation for 25 years; but he did not continue there the whole year, for his vow obliged him to be during the four cold months up to his neck in the water of the Ganges![124]

It is said that there is a banyan tree near Gombroon on the Persian gulf, computed to cover nearly 1,700 yards.

The Banyan tree in the Company’s Botanic garden, is a fine tree, but it is of small dimensions compared with those of the trees just mentioned.[125]

The cocoanut tree has a characteristically Oriental aspect and a natural grace, but it is not well suited to the ornamental garden or the princely villa.  It is too suggestive of the rudest village scenery, and perhaps also of utilitarian ideas of mere profit, as every poor man who has half a dozen cocoanut trees on his ground disposes of the produce in the bazar.

I would recommend my native friends to confine their clumps of plaintain trees to the kitchen garden, for though the leaf of the plaintain is a proud specimen of oriental foliage when it is first opened out to the sun, it soon gets torn to shreds by the lightest breeze.  The tattered leaves then dry up and the whole of the tree presents the most beggarly aspect imaginable.  The stem is as ragged and untidy as the leaves.