The Edison Banyan
By David Driapsa
Thomas Edison planted a four-inch diameter sapling Ficus bengalensis in 1925 on the grounds of his winter estate in Fort Myers, Florida. The tree was collected in India and a gift from rubber-magnate Harvey Firestone.
The tree now covers approximately one acre, with a canopy height of sixty feet.
Champion trees of this species are not recorded by American Forests, but it is listed in the Florida Record of Champion Trees, and this giant Banyan is a registered Florida State Champion. There are several challenger trees in south Florida of nearly the same size, but this one is the largest, and its association with the Wizard of Menlo Park gives it great distinction.
During the last decade of his life Thomas Edison directed his invention machine to establishing a source of domestic rubber for war-time production. He had earlier served as a consultant to the US Navy during World War I and saw first-hand that the industry and national defense of the United States was vulnerable to having its foreign sources of rubber cut off in the advent of a war.
Edison, Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford charted the Edison Botanic Research Corporation in 1925 to develop a domestic source of rubber. This was the dawn of the synthetic chemical revolution and plants were still widely used in industry, as you will recall Edison fifty years earlier had tested carbonized bamboo filament in perfecting his electric light bulb.
The genus Ficus contains a white sticky sap that is about three percent latex. The substance can be harvested to make rubber. Edison first experimented with Ficus of many different species, planting trees in rows in the experimental arboretum on his Fort Myers estate. Many of these trees are still extant. Edison tested the Ficus trees in Henry Nehrling’s arboretum at Naples, where more than one hundred species were growing. It tuned out that Edison considered Ficus too slow growing to provide a dependable war-time source of domestic rubber. He experimented with thousands of other plants, sending plant collectors searching across the nation. Edison eventually focused his research on common Golden Rod (Solidago spp). This ubiquitous plant grows rapidly, has a relatively high content of latex, and several crops a year could be grown in Florida and harvested my machinery to reduce production cost. Edison perfected a ten foot tall super strain of Golden Rod through his hybridization experiments.
The quickly emerging science of synthetic chemicals eclipsed the usefulness of Golden Rod as a source of rubber and the Edison Botanic Corp folded. Edison was not alone in searching for a domestic source of rubber and through the process many species of Ficus trees were introduced into south Florida through the United States Department of Foreign Plant Introduction headed up by the famous plant explorer, Dr. David Fairchild. As a result, the South Florida landscape is graced today by many species of the majestic Ficus.
David J Driapsa Landscape Architect
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