The Edison Banyan
By David Driapsa, FASLA
Thomas Edison planted a four-inch diameter sapling Ficus bengalensis on the grounds of his Fort Myers, Florida winter estate in 1925. The tree, collected in India, was a gift from rubber-magnate Harvey Firestone.
The tree now covers approximately one acre of ground, with a canopy height of sixty-four feet.
Champion trees of this species are not recorded by American Forests, but the Florida Record of Champion Trees does and designates this giant Banyan a registered Florida State Champion. There are several challenger trees in south Florida of near 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 served as a consultant to the U.S. Navy during World War I and saw first-hand that the United States was vulnerable to having foreign sources of rubber cut off, all coming from overseas and vitally important to American industry and national defense.
Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford charted the Edison Botanic Research Corporation in 1925 to develop that important 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, fifty years earlier Edison used carbonized bamboo for the filament in perfecting his electric light bulb.
The genus Ficus contains a white sticky sap that is about three percent latex and that substance is harvested to make rubber. Edison first experimented with many different Ficus species, planting trees in rows in the experimental arboretum on his Fort Myers winter estate. Many of those trees still exist. Nearby, at Naples, he tested the Ficus trees in Henry Nehrling’s arboretum, where more than one hundred species were grown. As it turned out, Edison considered Ficus too slow-growing for a ready source of domestic rubber, and he also understood that the high costs to produce it would erode profits. He experimented with thousands of other plants, sending his plant collectors searching across the nation. Edison eventually focused his research on the common Golden Rod (Solidago spp). This ubiquitous plant grows rapidly and its sap has a high content of latex. Under managed field conditions, its rapid growth could produce several crops a year and harvesting it with machinery would reduce overhead production costs and increase profits. Edison perfected a ten foot tall super strain of Golden Rod through his hybridization experiments.
The rapidly emerging science of synthetic chemicals eclipsed the usefulness of his Golden Rod experiments as a source of domestic 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 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 landscapes of South Florida today are graced by majestic Ficus trees.
David J Driapsa Landscape Architect
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