Largest Tree In the World

In 1900, the largest tree in the world, sat in the public square in Nassau. It was called the “Hurricane Tree”

Called the Hurricane Tree in the Capital of the Bahama Islands

In Nassau, the capital city of the Bahama Islands, they say “the tree in the public square” –not the trees. Now, the public square of Nassau is quite large as that of most cities of the size, but there is only one tree in it, and that tree literally fills the square and spreads its shade over all the public buildings in the neighbourhood. For it is the largest tree in the world at its base although it is hardly taller than a three-story house. It is variously known as a ceiba, or a silk cotton tree, but the people of the low islands of the the West Indies call it the hurricane tree. For no matter how hard the wind blows it cannot disturb the mighty buttressed trunk of the ceiba. In the hurricane of last spring all the palms and many of the other trees of Nassau were overturned, but the great hurricane tree, although it lost all of its leaves, did not lose so much as a branch. Its trunk throws out great curving, wing-like branches, some of them 20 feet wide and nearly as high. These extend into the ground on all sides and braces the tree against all attack, while the great branches spread a thick shade overhead. In the tropic sunshine of midsummer, hundreds, even thousands, of people may gather in the cool of its shadow. No one knows how old the great tree is, but it must be hundreds, if not thousands of years. A very old picture in the library of Nassau shows the tree as big as it is at present, and even the oldest negro in the island cannot remember when it was much smaller