Fascinating Fig Trees - Australian native

The fig plant ranges from a bush to large trees or stranglers, with broad, rough, sometimes deciduous leaves that are deeply lobed or sometimes nearly entire. The stranglers begin life as an epiphyte high up in the branches of a tree. Roots of the fig grow slowly down the trunk. Once they reach the ground, the roots thicken and form a lattice work around the trunk of the host tree eventually strangling it. The other type of figs are the non stranglers, which grow in the ground or over rocks.

Fig tree species

Pollination process

Fig trees together with fig wasps provide a good example of cooperation in biology through their relationship of obligate mutualism in which the very small fig wasp pollinates the flowers inside the fig multiple fruit—typically one particular species of wasp for each species of tree—while the fig tree's multiple fruit provides nourishment and a safe haven for the wasp.

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