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The Bodhi Tree of Foster Botanical Garden

Honolulu, Hawaii, United States

A 1913 offshoot of the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi lineage planted by Mary Foster, a living piece of the Bodh Gaya tree lineage growing in a Honolulu city garden.

In Foster Botanical Garden grows a bodhi tree planted in 1913 from a cutting of the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, itself a sapling-line of the tree at Bodh Gaya beneath which the Buddha's awakening is remembered. The Honolulu cutting was brought and planted through Mary Foster, a philanthropist who supported Anagarika Dharmapala's work, and the lineage makes it a genuine bloodline of the most storied tree in Buddhism, not a symbol of one.

Buddhist visitors pay respect at the tree as they would at its ancestors: circumambulation, offerings, quiet sitting under the heart-shaped leaves. The garden setting makes it one of the most accessible bodhi-lineage trees outside Asia.

Visiting

Foster Botanical Garden, 50 N Vineyard Blvd, Honolulu; small admission, open daily except Mondays. See the Honolulu Botanical Gardens.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bodhi_tree_foster_botanical_gardens_hawaii.jpg), CC BY-SA.

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