Ficus nota

Cultivation Details

Plants can survive occasional light frosts, but the young shoots are often damaged, leading to the plant becoming more shrub-like^[1]. Succeeds in full sun or light shade. Succeeds in a variety of soils in areas with high humidity^[1]. The tree is grown as an ornamental in gardens. There is a danger of it becoming invasive if the fig wasps (which are essential for fertilization) are introduced to areas where it is grown ornamentally. The seeds are easily carried by water and adhere to clothing or to animals and so are easily spread into wild areas^[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].