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RETURNING from Greene's Falls at Maiala I made a diversion taking The Rainforest Circuit. Near the lowest point of the trail was a deep gully with a huge strangler fig on the other side. It had a complex spaghetti of roots and shoots climbing over its host tree and extending out over the base.
Strangler figs begin their life as a seed high in a tree. It slowly sends down a shoot towards the ground. After a number of years the shoot reaches the ground where it is able to draw nutrients accelerating its growth. Over the following hundred years the fig tree grows around the trunk of the host tree with new shoots heading in either direction to provide its own large canopy of leaves above and roots below, until it eventually strangles the host tree to death. Then the host tree rots away providing a huge reserve of nutrients to the fig tree as it continues to establish itself as a dominant tree in the rainforest.
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