Common Name:

General Information

Ficus barclayana is a shrub or small tree that is often freely branched or slender; it can grow from 1 - 10 metres tall[].
The tree is sometimes harvested from the wild for local use as a food and medicine. It is sometimes found growing in home gardens and around villages[].

Known Hazards

None known

Botanical References

Range

Pacific - Fiji.

Habitat

Dense, dry, or open forest or on its edges, and in coastal and hillside thickets, at elevations up to 1,050 metres[].

Properties

Edibility Rating
Medicinal Rating
Habit	Tree
Height	6.00 m
Cultivation Status	Cultivated, Semi-cultivated, Wild

Cultivation Details

The plant can produce fruit all year round[].
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

Fruit[]. The figs, at first green to yellow, become reddish to purple or brown at maturity and may attain a diameter of 18 mm€[].

Leaves - cooked[]. Generally, only the very young leaves of Ficus species would be used[].

Medicinal

The leaves are a very good styptic[]. Mixed with those of other plants, they are made into a decoction used internally as a treatment for stomach ailments[].
Applied externally, the leaves are made into a poultice that is appled to sore legs, varicose veins, bleeding wounds etc[]. An infusion of the leaves is a good wash for inflamed eyes[].

The fruits are put into teeth cavities[].

Other Uses

None known

Propagation

Seed -

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