Living bridges

The technical name of one of the largest trees we have in the garden (we have two exemplaries of it) is Ficus Elastica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus_elastica

It is the tree I call "caoutchouc tree" in my videos, as it is the way we have always called them. In our garden they are around 15 or 20 meters high I believe, but they can reach up to more than 40 meters of height.

And they develop aerial roots (that I usually cut).

But in some South-Eastern Asian countries, they used to build living bridges with those roots. The following images, taken from Wikipedia, illustrate what can be done with those living aerial roots.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Living_root_bridges,_Nongriat_village,_Meghalaya2.jpg

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1_Rangthylliang_1.JPG

Those bridges can sustain the weight of 50 persons at the same time, and they can live for hundreds of years!

My dream would be to one day build something alive, a stairway and / or a bridge with the aerial roots of our Ficus Elastica trees.

That would make a book, a fantasy novel, in itself.

With the Architecture skills of the Faerie Princess, and her vision, I believe that we will one day accomplish even that dream...