The Banyan Tree still stands! Though everything around it has been charred, the tree still stands within Lahaina Banyan Tree Court. The Old Lahaina Courthouse in front of it is standing, though only its walls remain.
Arborists have checked out the tree and its roots, and they say that there are signs of healthy tree tissue below the charred bark. If the roots are strong, and it’s taken care of, the tree may survive and continue to grow. Clean-up and recovery crews from Goodfellow are watering it daily. There’s still life under every one of the 35 aerial roots and the main trunk.
The fact that the Lahaina Banyan Tree still stands gives the people of Lahaina and Maui hope. Just like our community, banyan trees are incredibly strong and can handle a great deal of stress.
Today, what we’re doing is called aeration. We’re breaking up the compaction of the soil, and if there’s any burnt or charred soil (which we didn’t actually see on top of the ground)… we want to break it up so that water can penetrate down into the ground. After we break up the soil like this, then we’re going to be putting on the tree what we call a compost tea with microorganisms in it. We’re going to be putting on some what they call Bio-Char. It’s a type of material that helps the tree absorb foreign materials and things like that, but we’ll also be putting on humic acid. And then we’re going to be monitoring the soil moisture. So we’ll have someone checking the moisture every few days and then we’ll be documenting that. So we’ll be checking and trying to keep the moisture in the ground the best we can but not overwatering it,” Arborist Steve Nimz explained in detail. “We checked underneath the bark of all the lower trunks of the tree and we found that there’s still live tissue.”
“We didn’t find see any major charring or scarring of the tree, like a lot of other trees we’ve looked at. But we did not find what we call a good sap flow. We found sap underneath it, but this particular species of tree usually oozes out sap a lot. Since it’s not oozing out sap, it’s kinda like going into a coma. It’s kinda going into a holding stage. So that’s what I feel the tree is doing right now, and what we’re doing is just like someone in a coma, they give him an intravenous shot. And then they keep their vitals going, but they don’t know what to do after that. Same way with the tree, we’re give it an intravenous shot with the aeration and the treatments we’re doing now, and then when someone’s in a coma, we don’t know how long it’s going to be. A week, a month, a year, what ever it is, so long as the vitals are still going, we keep em going on it.”
“So, when they blink or move a finger, then we know we’re going to do something. And on the tree, as soon as we see a new bud pop, or something like that, then we know that the tree’s responding to the treatment, or we may have to change our treatment. So the tree is going to tell us what to do.”