Earlier this year I travelled to the tropical house at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, where ethnobotanical researcher and writer Anna Lewington interviewed me about two fig trees with amazing stories.

The BBC World Service will broadcast her two-part radio programme this month, starting tomorrow (18 August) with the story of the Buddha’s tree of enlightenment (Ficus religiosa). Next week’s programme (25 August) is about a sacred banyan (Ficus benghalensis) in Southern India that is so big 20,000 people can stand under it.

You can find the episodes and the broadcast times in different world regions here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csvntd. They will also be available to stream or download as podcasts after the broadcast date.