I was on a Buddhist pilgrimage to India five years ago and on the flight home my roommate told me that someone had given her some bodhi tree seeds (ficus religiosa) which she offered to share with me (yes, I do know that importing seeds into the US without a license is a no-no). When I got back to NYC, I took some compost from our community garden in Riverside Park, NYC, added potting soil, and planted the seeds. Eventually one shoot emerged and grew steadily into a small tree, now a healthy 18 inches high. I attach a photo showing the whole tree and a close-up of two branches so that you can see the arrangement of the leaves (which are finely serrated) and the odd angle at which they grow. The mature leaves are 1“ wide at the center and 3” long. The lower branches are now more than 12 inches long. I studied trees when I volunteered for the NYC Parks Dept Tree Census a few years back and I never encountered anything like this or in any of my tree books and I have no way of knowing whether this is one of the Indian seeds I was given or whether it came from the compost made in our garden. It is definitely not a bodhi tree (I have subsequently purchased a little bodhi tree from a nursery in Texas and it is thriving). Does anyone recognize my mystery tree from the attached pix and description?
Yes, indeed! I looked at various pix on Google and that's definitely what it is. Thank you, Saltcedar. How on earth did you know what a curry tree looks like? Do they also grow in the US?
