Ficus trachypison

K. Schum. & Lauterb.

Moraceae Edible: Fruit

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Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

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Botanical Research Institute of Texas

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Bell Museum, University of Minnesota

Description

A tree. It grows 30 m tall. The trunk is crooked and fluted. It is 50 cm across. It has buttresses 1.5 m high. The leaves are simple and arranged in spirals. The leaves are 5-15 cm long by 3.5-10 cm wide. The fruit are on the trunk. The fruit are 4-8 mm long by 4-10 mm wide. They are yellow to red when ripe.

Edible Uses

The fruit are eaten.

Distribution

It is a tropical plant.

Where It Grows

Asia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, SE Asia, Solomon Islands,

Cultivation

Fig trees have a unique form of fertilization, each species relying on a single, highly specialized species of wasp that is itself totaly dependant upon that fig species in order to breed. The trees produce three types of flower; male, a long-styled female and a short-styled female flower, often called the gall flower. All three types of flower are contained within the structure we usually think of as the fruit. The female fig wasp enters a fig and lays its eggs on the short styled female flowers while pollinating the long styled female flowers. Wingless male fig wasps emerge first, inseminate the emerging females and then bore exit tunnels out of the fig for the winged females. Females emerge, collect pollen from the male flowers and fly off in search of figs whose female flowers are receptive. In order to support a population of its pollinator, individuals of a Ficus spp. must flower asynchronously. A population must exceed a critical minimum size to ensure that at any time of the year at least some plants have overlap of emmission and reception of fig wasps. Without this temporal overlap the short-lived pollinator wasps will go locally extinct.

Other Uses

The bark is fibrous. It is used for making cordage, cloth and maybe also to make tapa bark cloth. The fibrous branches used to clean teeth. The leaves of some species are used to wrap food for cooking. The leaves are quite rough and can be used as a sandpaper substitute and for scouring pots. The wood of plants in this genus is usually of low quality, light in weight, soft and not very durable. It is sometimes used for purposes such as light construction, digging sticks, yam stakes, etc. The wood is also used for fuel and sometimes for making fire by friction.