Common Name:

General Information

Ficus geocharis is a tree that can grow up to 17 metres tall. The bole can be 20cm in diameter[, ].
The tree is sometimes harvested from the wild for local use as a food.

Known Hazards

None known

Botanical References

Range

Southeast Asia - Malaysia and Indonesia.

Habitat

An understorey tree, mainly in disturbed keranga, mixed dipterocarp, sub-montane and regrowth forests at elevations up to 1,200 metres. Usually along rivers and streams and on hillsides with sandy soils[].

Properties

Edibility Rating
Habit	Tree
Height	12.00 m
Pollinators	Wasps
Cultivation Status	Wild

Cultivation Details

Often found in the wild on sandy soils[].
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

The young leaves can be used as vegetable[].

Fruit[]. The red-purple, globose fruits are covered with green scales; they are around 15mm in diameter[]. The fruits are placed along ground creeping stems that can be several meters long[].

Medicinal

None known

Other Uses

None known

Propagation

Seed -

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