The Edison Banyan

10/01/22 • 45 min

Why did Thomas Edison plant a banyan tree sapling at his winter residence in 1926? You guessed it, there was an experiment involved. Native to India, it is now a massive, beloved tree at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, Florida. While this isn’t an “escape from the lab” story, it is sort of a “took over the lab” story! Debbie Hughes, the Horticultural Director, explains what happened. Also, we dig into the mythology of fig trees - specifically “strangler” figs - and their critical ecological and cultural importance with rainforest ecologist and author Mike Shanahan.
Guests
Debbie Hughes
Horticultural Director, Edison & Ford Winter Estates
https://www.edisonfordwinterestates.org/
Mike Shanahan
Author, Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers: The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees
https://underthebanyan.blog/about/
Tree Story Short
Sashil Sachdeva
Vadodara, India
Podcast Consultant
Martha Douglas-Osmundson
Music
"Sleepy Head," Alchemorph

Theme Music
Diccon Lee, www.deeleetree.com
Artwork
Dahn Hiuni, www.dahnhiuni.com/home
Website
thisoldtree.show
Transcripts available.
Follow on
Facebook or Instagram
We want to hear about the favorite tree in your life! To submit a ~4 or 5 minute audio story for consideration for an upcoming episode of "Tree Story Shorts" on This Old Tree, record the story on your phone’s voice memo app and email to:
[email protected]
This episode was written in part at LitArts RI, a community organization and co-working space that supports Rhode Island's creators.
litartsri.org

Previous Episode

The Betsey Williams Sycamore

The Betsey Williams Sycamore is the most famous tree in Rhode Island. Its huge girth and spreading branches have been photographed, climbed on, and loved by generations of visitors to historic Roger Williams Park in Providence. But its history touches on the legacy of Roger Williams, Rhode Island’s founder; introduces overlooked characters, some noble and some "shady," including a forgotten tree; and features a Williams family crisis (and divorce trial) that threatened the tree and future park.
Guests
Renee Gamba
Director of the Museum of Natural History
Parks Dept., City of Providence
http://providenceri.gov/museum/
http://https://www.providenceri.gov/parks-recreation/
Ruth Macaulay
History Dept., Lincoln School
http://lincolnschool.org
Special thanks to
Andrew Smith, The Rhode Island Supreme Court Judicial Record Center, http://https://www.courts.ri.gov/JudicialRecordsCenter/Pages/default.aspx
Rebecca Valentine, The Rhode Island Historical Society, http://rihs.org
Readers in order of appearance
Ed Nardell, Martha Douglas-Osmundson, Andy Sabo, Margaret Sabo, Laura Maxwell, Robb Barnard
Podcast Consultant
Martha Douglas-Osmundson
Music
"No Broken Windows," Headlund

Next Episode

Chronicling a Tree: Thoreau's Concord Elm

Concord, Massachusetts, 1856. Four men cut down a huge, seemingly healthy American elm tree using block and tackle, and ropes drawn by a horse. The graceful tree towered above a house whose owners heard creaking during a storm - they felt unsafe and had it removed. The event would have been long forgotten, except one of America’s greatest writers and earliest environmentalists also lived in Concord - Henry David Thoreau.

Supremely ticked-off, the removal of the stately elm inspired a flurry of journal writing by Thoreau that defined elms as symbols of virtue that looked to Concord’s past and the country’s future. Guest Thomas Campanella, Professor at Cornell University and author of Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm, shares his work. It turns out, elm trees helped define our young nation’s sense of itself.

Guest
Thomas J. Campanella
Professor of City and Regional Planning
Cornell University
Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm, Yale University Press, 2003.
Henry David Thoreau and the Yankee Elm, Arnoldia, 2001.
Other Sources:
Thoreau and the Language of Trees, Richard Higgins, Univ of California Press, 2017.
Podcast Consultant
Martha Douglas-Osmundson
Music
"Nothing Like the Summer," Brightarm Orchestra

This Old Tree - The Edison Banyan

Transcript

Douglas Still00:00:00.299

Today is Saturday, October 1, 2022. Four days ago, a category four hurricane named Ian made nearly direct landfall on Fort Myers, Florida. It was one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the state, and it caused major devastation and some loss of life. This episode of this old tree was scheduled to drop that same day and our subject, the Edison Banyan Tree, is in Fort Myers. Obviously, I couldn't release the episode without knowing the fat