Lahaina’s 150-year-old banyan tree is still in intensive care after the August 2023 wildfire, and the next few weeks could determine whether the town’s most famous shade-giver returns to public life or fades into history. The tree and the surrounding Banyan Court Park remain off-limits to visitors while arborists work around the clock on treatments and safety measures.
An invasive health assessment authorized by the Maui County Arborist Committee is up next. Arborists from across Maui, along with a few from Oʻahu, will tug on branches, tension-test limbs, and drive stainless-steel probes into key spots to check for sap flow and a functioning cambium, officials said. As reported by Honolulu Civil Beat, Treecovery co‑founder Duane Sparkman warned, "we really don't know what's under the skin," while county arborist Timothy Griffith Jr. bluntly described the tree as "in the ICU."
Care and Early Treatments
Since the fire, volunteers, landscapers and nonprofit crews have been focused on the basics that keep a stressed tree alive: watering, aerating the root zone and adding organic soil amendments to push new root growth and boost resilience. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources documented similar "compost tea" applications and aeration work in August 2023 as part of the tree’s early recovery efforts.
Even with that care, the banyan remains fragile. An 18-inch-diameter branch came crashing down during an islandwide rainstorm earlier this month, revealing fungus inside the wood. Arborists have removed roughly 40% of the tree in the year after the blaze, with 22 trunks taken down so far. According to Honolulu Civil Beat, Treecovery Hawaiʻi has injected large volumes of compost tea into the soil around the banyan while crews continue pruning away burned and unstable material.
Before the fire, the banyan’s canopy shaded roughly two-thirds of an acre and acted as Lahaina’s unofficial town square, a central gathering place for ceremonies, festivals and markets. Theo Morrison of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation told Hawai‘i Public Radio that "shade is really, really important in Lahaina," and community leaders say saving whatever can be preserved of the tree carries as much cultural weight as ecological value.
What’s Next
Arborists say the coming assessment will guide two big decisions. First, what must be removed immediately to keep people safe under and around the tree. Second, what treatments or propagation strategies might give the banyan a shot at recovery over the coming years or even decades. Maui County has not scheduled the invasive testing yet, and Banyan Court Park remains under county management while officials review arborists’ recommendations and sort out protections for both the tree and the public.
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