Emerson’s Banyan-Rhizomatics

For three days in early August 2023, wildfires tore through the Hawaiian island of Maui. Wind-driven and sparked by excessive anthropogenic drought, decades-long water mismanagement and tampering with indigenous vegetation, the fires killed 102 people, burned close to 7,000 acres of land, and destroyed more than 2,000 houses.1 The most devastated town was Lahaina, the old royal seat of the Kingdom of Hawaii, 80 percent of which was burned to the ground in two days. Among the wildfires’ nonhuman victims was America’s oldest banyan tree—initially presumed dead when the fire torched one third of it, but a few months later seen sprouting new leaves.