Common Name:

General Information

Ficus polita is an evergreen shrub or small tree usually growing up to 15 metres tall, but exceptionally to 40 metres[]. The dense crown can be flat or rounded, and can spread for up to 40 metres. The bole is generally short and stout. The plant often commences life as an epiphyte, growing in the branches of another tree[]. It sends down aerial roots from its lower lateral branches which root when they touch the ground and become trunks[]. The growth rate of the tree then accelerates due to the extra nutrition it receives, it sends down more aerial roots and also grows faster than the other tree eventually killing the tree it was growing in[].
The leaves are occasionally harvested from the wild for food. The tree is sometimes grown as a boundary marker or living hedge and is also planted for ornament and to provide shade[].

Known Hazards

None known

Botanical References

Range

Tropical Africa - Senegal to southern Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, south to northern Angola, DR Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and northeastern S. Africa.

Habitat

Wooded savannah; gallery forest; evergreen forests; bushland; semi-deciduous forest; coastal rain-forest; on all types of soils, also found on old lava flows. At elevations from sea level up to 2,150 metres[].

Properties

Edibility Rating
Other Uses Rating
Habit	Evergreen Tree
Height	0.00 m
Pollinators	Wasps
Cultivation Status	Cultivated, Ornamental, Wild

Cultivation Details

Found in the wild in a wide range of 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

Leaves - cooked[]. The leaves are occasionally used as a vegetable[].

The green to purple, globose fruits are 20 - 40mm in diameter[]. This report does not say that they are edible, though many species in this genus do produce edible fruit[].

Medicinal

None known

Agroforestry Uses:

The tree is sometimes used as a boundary marker and for live fences[].

Other Uses

None known

Propagation

Seed -
Cuttings

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