From Earth to Heaven - a photo on Flickriver

Gomeros (Ficus Macrophylla)

Large || Interesthings || streets of Buenos Aires

You get this vision when coming out of La Recoleta, the famous and characteristic Cemetery, a sort of monumental City of the Dead (where Evita's mortal remains are kept, for example, among other eminents' ones) because these trees are across the street at the entrance/exit of the Cemetery. So you don't notice them at the arrival because you're focused on entering the venue.
But when you come out at the end of your visit of this special place you're in a sense sensitized to notice these trees (besides being they huge and situated exactly in front of the exit). It might be that the observers (at least the believers of monotheistic religions, I guess) see in this big convergence of sort of intricate net of roots seemingly emerging from the soil into the trunk, and then in the "transformation" of the trunk itself in an even much bigger foliage apparatus very extensively branching into the air the figurative continuation of the soul's path from earth to heaven after the body container has gone to soil ("pulvis eris").

Beyond the metaphoric clue Ficus Macrophylla is a parasitic (not saprophitic) tree with a natural habitat in the rain forest.
Exemplars have been planted in several cities as monumental trees. These ones in Buenos Aires have been planted around 1850.
A much more notable exemplar is found in the Italian city of Palermo. Watching this last one you can catch "the function of the shape" of the conspicuous root apparatus. It doesn't absolve the function of giving a strong stability, or at least not only that. In fact the whole enormus conic root apparatus is actually outside the earth and all these root branches have secondarily been formed, stemming from the sides of the trunk itself. They are not undersoil roots that have become secondarily uncovered due to athmosferic elements.
In its original environment the aerial branches of this tree make spires around other plants' trunks and branches and at last suffucate them and take their place, going at last from tree to tree even a long way from their own original parental trunk and roots. So ficus macrophylla, that needs a big amount of water, has developed the capacity of producing sort of prolongations or pillars from their branches that reach down to the earth, where at last branch out many serpiginuous roots on their own.
As for what can be the divine inherence to our humble reality, I love to suppose that after throwing the very initial seed, what we call our creator (of which I am a non fundamentalist believer :-) has always kept himself well out of all the process of the reality becoming.

Taken in: Argentina / Ciudad de Buenos Aires / Buenos Aires / Recoleta (show map)

Taken on: November 17, 2011

Tags:

Gomero

Ficus Macrophylla

Buenos Aires

Argentina

Recoleta

Black & white

roots

trees

Lamp Post

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Sets appears in: • Gli alberi • Buenos Aires

Groups appears in: • B&W • Utata more » • top-f [ 25+ faves ] • BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA • worldwidewandering - a travel atlas « less

Camera: Nikon D80, f/4.5, 1/80 sec, 18mm (=27mm), ISO 400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D80
Aperture:	f/4.5
Exposure Time:	0.013 sec (1/80)
Focal Length:	18mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
ISO:	400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Center-weighted average
White Balance:	Auto
Gain Control:	Low gain up
Contrast:	High
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Capture NX 2.2.7 W
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