Common Name:

General Information

Ficus maxima is a small to medium-sized tree, growing from 7 - 25 metres tall369].
The tree is harvested from the wild for local use as a medicine and source of fibre.

Known Hazards

None known

Botanical References

,

Range

S. America - Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, north through the Caribbean, Central America to Mexico.

Habitat

Frequently growing along streams and more commonly found in the seasonally dry areas, at lower elevations from sea level to around 1,000 metres[]. Moist or wet forest or fields, often in pastures, by roadsides, or along stream beds[].

Properties

Medicinal Rating
Other Uses Rating
Habit	Tree
Height	15.00 m
Pollinators	Wasps
Cultivation Status	Wild

Cultivation Details

A plant of lowland tropical areas, usually found in areas that are seasonally dry[].

Related to F. insipida[].
Leaves of vigorous seedlings are sometimes as much as 30cm long and 19cm wide[].
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[].

Edible Uses

None known

Medicinal

The latex is applied externally to treat rheumatism in the back[].

Other Uses

A fibre obtained from the bark is used for making mats and cloth[, ].

Propagation

Seed -

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