Common Name:

General Information

Ficus yoponensis is an evergreen tree with a large, spreading crown; it usually grows 8 - 40 metres tall, but can reach 50 metres. The usually straight bole is up to 100cm in diameter and buttressed[, ].
The tree is harvested from the wild for local use as a medicine and source of wood.

Known Hazards

None known

Botanical References

,

Range

S. America - Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela; C. America - Panama to Mexico; Caribbean - Trinidad.

Habitat

Moist rain forest and premontane wet forest, where it is common mainly in the younger forest; at elevations from sea level to 1,600 metres, but mainly at 500 - 1,200 metres[]. Trees of moist ravines, river edges, and wet forests[].

Properties

Medicinal Rating
Other Uses Rating
Habit	Evergreen Tree
Height	35.00 m
Pollinators	Wasps
Cultivation Status	Wild

Cultivation Details

Seedlings require considerable light to survive, which explains their greater abundance in the younger, more open forest[].
The tree flowers and bears fruit throughout the year[].
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 figs are solitary, globose, to 18mm in diameter, green at maturity, often purplish at the apex, mottled with irregular, lighter green, weakly pustular areas[].

Medicinal

The fresh latex is ingested as a remedy for diarrhoea and worms[]..

Other Uses

A milky latex flows from any wounds in the plant[].

The wood is used for fence posts[].

Propagation

Seed -

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