Ficus benghalensis

Ficus benghalensis, commonly known as the banyan, banyan fig and Indian banyan, is a tree native to the Indian Subcontinent. Specimens in India are among the largest trees in the world by canopy coverage.

Quotes

 * Another curiosity in this neighborhood is the celebrated bur or banyan tree, called Kuveer Bur, from a saint who is said to have planted it. It stands on, and entirely covers an island of the Nerbudda about twelve miles above Broach. Of this tree, which has been renowned ever since the first coming of the Portuguese to India, which is celebrated by our early voyagers and by Milton, and which, the natives tell us boasted a shade sufficiently broad to shelter 10,000 horse, a considerable part has been washed away with the soil on which it stood, within these few years, by the freshes of the river, but enough remains, as I was assured, to make it one of the noblest groves in the world, and well worthy of all the admiration which it has received.
 * Bishop Heber. Quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. Volume IV. ( Heber, Reginald, Narrative of A Journey Through The Upper Provinces of India From Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-1825 (With Notes Upon Ceylon), An Account of a Journey to Madras and the Southern Provinces, 1826, and Letters Written in India, 3 vols. Low Price Publications, 1993, first published 1827. vol iii 67 ff)


 * It may briefly yet categorically be stated here that the earliest book of the Aryans, viz. the Rigveda, does not mention any of the species of cold-climate trees... On the other hand, all the trees mentioned in the Rigveda, such as the Asvattha (Ficus Religiosa L.), Khadira (Acacia catechu), Nyagrodha (Ficus benghalensis), to name just a few, do not belong to a cold climate but to a tropical one.
 * Lal, B. B. (2005). Can the Vedic people be identified archaeologically?–An approach. IT, 31, 173-194.