Last year I was walking in the very striking Nightcap National Park, a sub-tropical rainforest in Australia and took some photographs of strangler figs. These fig “vines” are common in the world’s tropical forests. They grow to large dominant trees and may eventually “strangle” their host, forming a tree in their own right.

Here below are the photographs illustrating how a strangler fig (sp. Ficus watkinsiana) (1) starts to engulf it’s host, (2 and 3) the vines grow thicker, (4)  eventually killing the host becoming a big tree with a hollow central core.

Quiet Earth sponsored audio: Songs of the Forest