Ficus aurea

Cultivation Details

An easily grown and very tolerant plant, it succeeds in full sun to partial shade^[1]. Succeeds in a range of well-drained soils from sandy to clay, including fairly acid or alkaline conditions^[1]. Plants are tolerant of occasional inundation of the soil^[1]. Moderately tolerant of salt-laden winds^[1]. Plants are very drought tolerant^[1]. Seeds germinate easily in the landscape allowing the tree to invade nearby land^[1]. Some care, therefore, needs to be taken that the species of wasp that fertilizes this plant is not introduced into areas where the plant is grown as an ornamental^[PFAF]. A fast-growing tree^[1]. The plant produces surface roots that can lift sidewalks or interfere with mowing^[1]. When grown as an ornamental, the many slim but rigid trunks that are produced from the crown can become a maintenance headache as they roots need to be removed to keep a neat-looking landscape. The shiny, thick, dark green leaves create dense shade and the surface roots add to the problem of maintaining a lawn beneath this massive tree. The fruit drops and makes a mess beneath the tree^[1]. 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^[2].