Historic banyan tree at Naples Zoo gets special protection shot after Hurricane Irma

Just inside the Naples Zoo, an enormous banyan tree stands with open arms — er, branches — welcoming visitors as they enter the property.

The tree is a common spot for visitors to stop and take pictures with their families, but on this particularly chilly Wednesday morning, the tree had paparazzi all to itself.

Almost a dozen workers from the zoo and Arborjet, a plant health solutions company, weaved and bobbed through the tree’s branches and around its trunk as they systematically drilled holes into the tree and then injected it with a liquid.

Arborjet donated this treatment to the Naples Zoo to protect the tree, which some zoo employees call an iconic or legacy tree. The company typically treats champion, historical and iconic trees throughout the country.

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The two-step treatment method uses plugs that act as one-way valves. The plugs sit in the tree’s vascular tissue and then are injected with small doses of liquid medicine called PHOSPHO-jet, a disease-resistant plant treatment that increases cell wall development, strengthens the tree against disease and protects against insect invasions.

JB Toorish, the Southeast technical manager for Arborjet, said this banyan needed protecting as a precaution, not because of what he calls a 911 situation.

“With this methodology, we can treat trees from a proactive standpoint to help them improve their overall health, but we can also treat trees from more of a 911 type of standpoint where we’re treating them for a specific insect,” Toorish said.

Three years ago, another banyan tree at the zoo, the Cuban laurel right outside the front entrance, needed a 911 treatment for a gall wasp invasion. Since then, Arborjet has partnered with Naples Zoo to protect its historic trees.

Darryl Windham, the zoo’s horticultural manager, said the best part of this partnership has been Arborjet’s willingness to teach zoo employees how to treat the trees themselves.

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“We’ll be able to go out and do this on our own, which will save us cost in the long run,” Windham said. “And an extra benefit is actually getting eyes on the trees so we can monitor them and see how they respond to the treatment.

"For a horticulturalist, all trees have significant value, but mainly there’s some historical trees on the property that we’re going to try to keep an extra eye on.”

Hurricane Irma damaged many of the trees at the zoo, including the banyan receiving treatment, which Toorish said can cause stress in a tree and attract invasive insects. Trees that have weathered storms often have a harder time surviving because they’ve lost limbs and branches that are essential for photosynthesis creation.

Danielle Green, the zoo’s director of gardens and grounds, said many of the trees at the zoo are almost 100 years old and that protecting them post-Irma was a top priority.

“Our trees were hit pretty hard with Irma, but they are showing strong resilience as everyone else in the staff and the animal collection has here as well,” Green said. “So all of the treatments that we would normally do this year, we’re doing along with some additional treatments just to give it a little extra boost and to recover from the damage.”