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Temple tree
Temple tree A banyan tree does not begin its life from a seed in the ground. Its seed needs another tree, a rock or some other structure on which to take root and develop. It is therefore not a parasite, but an epiphyte. If the tree grows on top of another tree, over time the…
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Multiple trunk tree
Multiple trunk tree The aerial roots of the banyan tree hang down and when they grow long enough will touch the ground. On that spot itself they may take root in the soil and so continue growing as a semi-independent tree. That’s what we see here, around this banyan in Lucknow. This process can go…
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Ficus benghalensis
Ficus benghalensis Why is the Indian fig tree, with its distinctive hanging aerial roots, called a banyan? It’s an interesting story, which has nothing to do with its sacred nature. ‘Banya’ appears to be the Gujarati word for ‘trader’. Via Portuguese and later English, the word ‘banyan’ first came to mean Hindu trader in India,…
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Sacred trees
Sacred trees Banyan trees are often regarded as sacred. I think this is because they are truly awe-inspiring, just like the gods themselves. When we find ourselves face to face with an extraordinary tree – a towering sequoia, an imposing baobab, a gnarled olive tree, a branching banyan tree – we soon fall silent. They…
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Blowholes in pancake rocks
Blowholes in pancake rocks The breakers dash against the rocky coast. The water breaks into a natural cave, forces its way into a narrowing tunnel, then finds, under enormous pressure, a way out to the surface through a vertical blowhole … That the sudden blasts of water up in the air appear amidst a landscape…
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Glacial milk
Glacial milk It can be white, but also grey or turquoise, depending on the mineral composition of the rock that is ground by the glacier on its slow way down. The rock flour collected in the melt water of the glacier is so fine that it remains suspended, giving the water its cloudy (milky) look.…
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Coincidence
Coincidence Two swimmers in Wellington Harbour. One in the water, the other on the wall of a gallery at the harbour front. One doing breaststroke, the other backstroke. Both rather clumsily. I remember when seeing the second swimmer I thought of the first whose picture I just had taken outside. It made me decide to…
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Rolled, rubbed and rounded
Rolled, rubbed and rounded The rock and the stones, they look of the same soft make-up, only differing in colour. What a nice and quiet ensemble they make in the blazing sun. Till the tide comes in and the waves wash over them. Then the stones roll up and down in splashing water, rubbing against…
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A streak of yellow
A streak of yellow All I can say about this terrace is that I sat down there once with Theodora for a good meal, sea food of course. After a week of intensive work we thought we deserved it.* And why this photo? Right, because of the pleasant surprise of this bright streak of yellow…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
