Tree Vines

This is also at the Natural Bridge park. These are not vines, but roots of a strangler fig that germinated somewhere near the top of this tree. The roots of the fig grow down toward the ground and wrap around the original tree. Eventually the fig takes over and the center tree dies. This particular one is only the result of about a 100 years of work. We saw one that was over 500 years old where the host tree had died and rotted away. We could stick our heads in (careful of the poisonous spiders) and see up the center of that tree which had about a ten foot diameter. These trees are very common throughout this region.