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Ficus septica
Moraceae FAMILY

Ficus septica

Ficus septica

Edibility
0/5
Medicinal
2/5

Safety & Hazards

None known

Cultivation Details

HabitTree
Growth—

Found in the wild in a range of soil types[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]. A dioecious species, both male and female forms need to be grown if fruit and seed are required[3].

Propagation

Seed - Cite as: Tropical Plants Database, Ken Fern. tropical.theferns.info. 2026-02-20. <tropical.theferns.info/viewtropical.php?id=Ficus+septica>

Pollinators

Wasps

References

  1. [1]Plant Resources of Southeast Asia — http://proseanet.org/ ↩︎Lots of information on the uses of the plants of SE Asia.
  2. [2]Global Invasive Species Database — http://www.issg.org/database/welcome/ ↩︎Very detailed information on almost 400 species (with more being added) of plants that have become weeds in areas outside their native range.
  3. [3]Flora of China — Missouri Botanical Garden Press; St. Louis. · 1994 · http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/china/ ↩︎An excellent, comprehensive resource in 25 volumes. In addition to the botanical information the flora also gives basic information on habitat and some uses. An on-line version is also available.
  4. [4]Medicinal Plants in Papua New Guinea — World Health Organisation · 2009 · ISBN 978-92-9061-249-0 ↩︎Traditional medicinal uses of 126 species from Papua New Guinea, including information on modern research into the plants.
  5. [5]Asean Tropical Plant Database — http://211.114.21.20/tropicalplant/index.jsp ↩︎Terse details, with photos, of many of the plants growing in the tropical forests of southeast Asia. Gives some details of plant uses along with a description of the plant and its range.
  6. [6]Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants — http://www.anbg.gov.au/cpbr/cd-keys/rfk/index.html ↩︎An online resource giving botanical information, and a little bit about plant usage, for over 2,700 species of plants found in the Australian rainforest.
  7. [7]Minor Products of Philippine Forests — Brown. W. H. · Bureau of Forestry, Manilla. · 1920 ↩︎A useful guide to some of the plants of the area, though terse on details. The book is out of copyright and can be legally downloaded from the Internet.
  8. [8]Five hundred plant species in Gunung Halimun Salak National Park, West Java — Hari Priyadi et al · Center for International Forestry Research; Indonesia. · 2010 · http://www.cifor.cgiar.org · ISBN 978-602-8693-22-6 ↩︎Brief details of the uses of 500 Indonesian plants. It is available as a PDF document to download from the internet.