Common Name:

General Information

Ficus heteropleura. We have conflicting reports on the habit of this plant. According to one it is a tree up to 20 metres tall, with a bole up to 25cm in diameter, that often starts life as an epiphyte in the branch of a tree but eventually out-competes and kills that tree[]. Another report says that it is a is a scandent, twining shrub or liana with hanging side-branches, not a root-climber, but sometimes epiphytic; with a stem to 10cm diameter and stems up to 20 metres long[, ].
The plant is sometimes harvested from the wild for local medicinal use.

Known Hazards

None known

Botanical References

Range

E. Asia - southern China, India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines.

Habitat

An understorey tree in undisturbed mixed dipterocarp and sub-montane forests at elevations up to 1,500 metres. Mostly on hillsides and ridges, but also along the sides of rivers and streams[].

Properties

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

Cultivation Details

Found in the wild on both sandy and clay 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

None known

Medicinal

An infusion of the leaves is drunk as a treatment for constipation[].

Other Uses

None known

Propagation

Seed -

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