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Elixir Resort
T. Prunai, 99 Moo 3
Koh Yao Yai, 82160
Thailand

Tel: +66 8 7808 3838
+66 8 7809 3838

Email: sales@elixirresort.com

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Home > About Elixir

Over 120 years old and standing stately in front of the Resort, the Elixir tree welcomes guests as a potent symbol of continuous rejuvenation and a reminder of the timeless wonders of nature. It has witnessed the growth of human activity on Koh Yao Yai from the islands use as a temporary stop-over refuge point for Phang Nga fishermen around the early 20th century to a home for over 12,000 people, in 7 villages and engage in various forms of agriculture, rubber production as well as fishing. Koh Yao Yai retains its natural beauty and charm: an ideal place to find peace of mind, rejuvenating body and soul by getting back to nature while being pampered.

Like the over 800 other members of the Banyan tree family (Scientific Name: Moraceae), Elixir is a strangling fig tree (Scientific Genus: Ficus) because its seeds germinate in the cracks and crevices of the parent and other trees, often enveloping (wrapping) the host with numerous roots. Some Banyan trees grow root systems that can spread out over great distances. Others grow aerial roots from their branches that, when they reach the ground, root themselves and become another trunk on the same tree.

Elixir like others of the family has light colored bark and an umbrella shaped canopy. Green above and lighter below, the leaves are simple, ovoid and usually between 1.5 - 3 inches long. The waxy coating on the leaves offers protection from drying winds and sunlight.

Perhaps even more extraordinary is the tree’s fruit: a hollow structure called a cyconia, which is lined on the inside with hundreds of male and female flowers. The males carry pollen and the females bear seeds. There are two different types of female flowers; one with a short style and one with a long style. Elixir is of the Species Marcrophylla, and like all members of the Banyan tree family, can only be pollinated by its own species of wasp (Agaoninae). These wasps are about 2 millimeters long, and enter the cyconia through an opening at the bottom of the fruit. Once inside, they pollinate the long-styled female flowers in the process of laying their eggs in the ovaries of short-style flowers. Without these special wasps carrying pollen from one cyconium to another there would be no seeds.

When the eggs hatch, both a female and male wasp emerge. After the male hatches it finds a short-style flower and bites a small hole in the ovary wall through which he inseminates the female repeating the process with every female it finds. The female crawls out of the hole made by the male.

The pollinated seeds are spread by birds and small animals that feed upon them. The tiny, sticky seeds are not affected by the animal's digestive tract and soon germinate.

It is said that Buddha once meditated beneath a Banyan tree. Ficus religiosa is the sacred tree of Burma, Ceylon and India. One particular tree of the species of Ficus bengalensis in India is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records (1985) as the world's largest tree, with 1,000 prop roots and covering an area of four acres. The sap and bark of the family are used in folk medicine for various maladies such as impotence, liver problems, diarrhea, and gonorrhea as well as to stench bleeding. The name Banyan comes from the India where, in the Gujarati language, banya means "grocer/merchant," and the Portuguese employed the word to refer specifically to Hindu merchants and passed it along to the English as early as 1599 with the same meaning. By 1634, English writers began to tell of the banyan tree, a tree under which Hindu merchants would conduct their business. The tree provided a shaded place for a village meeting or for merchants to sell their goods. Eventually "banyan" became the name of the tree itself.