After the worst wildfires in more than a century ravaged Maui’s west coast, one of the first places Timothy Griffith Jr. visited was Lahaina’s historic banyan tree.
Maui County’s chief arborist had seen the drone footage and social media posts and feared the worst: Griffith imagined the 151-year-old tree reduced to a pile of ash.
So when he arrived at the scene the day after the fire, he was surprised to find the country’s largest banyan tree still standing, although its leaves were curled and brown. There was some living tissue under the bark near the base of the trunk, a sign of hope, but the leaves and twigs on the main branches were all charred.
The tree was in a coma, and Griffiths wasn’t sure if it would survive.
Through careful pruning, care, watering and nurturing over the past year, Griffith and his team of arborists, volunteers and experts have helped the tree regrow, now producing fresh leaves that are nearly seven feet long — an encouraging sign that the iconic banyan, like Lahaina itself, will not only survive, but thrive.
“This really is a phoenix rising from the ashes and giving people hope,” Griffith told USA Today.
This is the story of how Maui residents saved Lahaina’s banyan tree, with its glory and complicated history, and healed themselves in the process.
Maui residents recall “living in reverence” for the banyan tree
Its branches have witnessed love and loss, weddings and funerals. Life’s ups and downs have happened beneath its canopy, and for hundreds of mynah birds, within it.
Photographer Tad Craig, who has lived on Maui for 30 years, fondly remembers strolling through the marketplace beneath the tree’s branches every Saturday, where he captured a photo of a newlywed couple embraced in the tree’s trunk — the last couple to be married at Malia Lanakila Church, just two months before the disaster.
“It was such a beautiful tree,” Craig recalled, explaining that he and loved ones had taken photos under the banyan tree after his wedding in 2019.
On August 8, 2023, a wildfire ravaged the quaint town of Lahaina, the former capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, destroying nearly every building, including beloved historic landmarks such as the 200-year-old Waiola Church. More than 100 people died, some of whom were trapped in their cars trying to escape the fire. The flames hit trees rooted in the center of town, right on the beach.
As residents turned to one another for food, fuel and other necessities, helping to tend the remaining banyan trees was a source of comfort for Duane Sparkman after the disaster. He was one of more than 50 volunteers who worked with Griffith to keep the trees alive.
Sparkman, chief engineer at the Royal Lahaina Resort & Bungalows, frequently decorated trees with lights during pre-fire celebrations as chairman of the Maui County Tree Preservation Committee.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in its shade, enjoying its size and its massiveness, and being in awe of trees of that size,” he said. “And Kuleana “It’s heartwarming to me, given the responsibility of overseeing the revitalization, that I’ve even been allowed to do that.”
The day after the fire, as embers smoldered and families desperately searched for their lost loved ones, work began. Water tankers were brought in to spray the browned treetops and drench the roots. Workers injected compost tea into the soil to infuse it with micronutrients and spread crushed alfalfa on top to replenish nitrogen.
About six weeks after the fire, 100 tiny new leaves had sprouted, but Griffiths knew there was a long road to recovery.
A symbol of the whole of Maui? The banyan has a different meaning for Hawaiians.
The image of a banyan tree still standing after a fire that took so much from so many quickly became Lahaina Strong’s logo of hope, adorned on t-shirts and tote bags, but the tree has a more complicated meaning for Native Hawaiians.
Ekolu Lindsay, chairman of Maui Cultural Lands, which works to preserve Hawaiian culture, archaeological sites, native plants and people, said the landmark tree is not a revered symbol to many because it was planted to commemorate the arrival of Protestants.
The banyan was imported from India at the request of Queen Keopuolani to mark the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the first Protestant missionaries in the area. Planted as a sapling in 1873, the tree grew to 60 feet tall and 1.94 acres long, providing shade for nearly two-thirds of an acre, according to the Lahaina Restoration Foundation.
“Most local people aren’t in tune with it, but with the world jumping on board I think we need to use it as a catalyst to look at other things,” Lindsay said.
His family, like the Banyan Tree, has lived in Lahaina since the 1800s and was one of the last local families to live on Front Street before a fire destroyed their waterfront home. He owns a 150-year-old breadfruit tree and Ur Large sea grape trees, coconut trees and “the best mango trees around.”
Like many others, Lindsay said she hopes to return home within the next six months, “even if that means pitching a tent or pulling a trailer and going home.” She looks forward to replanting her ulu tree.
“That place has memories for generations, the smell of seaweed, the smell of fish caught by the old folks, the smell of mangoes falling,” Lindsay says. “Looking back now, we’ve seen a big recovery in the past year since the fire.”
Renewal and rebirth: evidence of “Lahaina Strong”
County arborist Griffith believes that two large charred monkeypod trees may have protected the banyan tree from greater damage.
But the northeast corner of the tree, next to a two-story building, was burned the hardest and showed no signs of new growth. As branches began to fall to the ground, the team decided in March to cut down the six trunks before they caused further structural damage to the rest of the tree.
The banyan tree is watered about three times a week, with sensors monitoring how much water it is absorbing, and Griffiths visits it once a week to check for new leaves and feel the soil for new roots.
“We’re not out of the woods,” Griffiths said, “but the fact that new growth is continuing gives me cautious optimism that we have something to work with in the coming decades.”
The team took dozens of cuttings from the new shoots and rooted them in pots. Over the next few years, they plan to replant the baby trees, also called keikis, in the northeast corner, where they will grow toward the parent tree over the next several decades.
“It’ll never look the same again, but it’s there and it’s something we need to work on,” Griffiths said.
Griffiths said the fires killed an estimated 25,000 trees, including historic ulu trees that were brought by canoe from Polynesia, and his team hopes to replant their descendants.
“We have so many people volunteering their time,” he says. “We get all kinds of emails. Just last week we had people email us saying they wanted to donate cuttings and small trees.”
But it’s too early to think about replanting just yet: As the one-year anniversary of the deadly fire approaches, authorities are still working to clear debris from burned areas.
Dark memories of the fire still haunt Sparkman — fireworks remind him of the sounds of propane tanks and cars exploding that night — but he’s impressed to see the reconstruction being carried out in the ruins.
Parts of Lahaina remain closed to outsiders, including the area around the tree, but restaurants, businesses and other areas remain open and Hawaii tourism officials are urging visitors to return to help Maui’s recovery.
Craig said the last two months have been the best for his photography business since the fire but he remains nervous about the future. Driving through Lahaina still brings tears to his eyes, but he’s “overjoyed” that the trees are still standing and “amazing and resilient.”
“This is a symbol of hope for Hawaii and Lahaina,” he said.
Since the fire, Sparkman has raised more than $220,000 to buy about 3,500 tree saplings to help reforest the island’s urban forests through his nonprofit, TreeCover, which distributes the saplings free of charge to families affected by the fires.
“Here in Hawaii, trees are important, they’re part of our families,” he said. “We really, really need trees.”
While the trees wait for new owners, they are being cared for at more than a dozen sites across the island, including in private homes and resorts, with the help of locals and tourists, he said.
“They’re healing because they’re helping,” Sparkman said. “It’s a big healing process for all of us.”
Contributors: Kathleen Wong, Saman Shafik and Mary Walrus Holdridge
