These are no ordinary trees. In their appearance, in their life history, in their extraordinary biological and cultural significance, the great strangler figs have few parallels.
Where does the story of a strangler fig begin? Does it begin when its tiny seed, smaller than a grain of sand, sprouts to grow into a true giant of the rainforest, over forty metres tall with spreading branches carrying thousands of figs? Or does it begin the moment a hornbill or a macaque or a bat eats a ripe fig, flies over to another tree and splatters a dropping with a small cluster of seeds on the high branches?
The strangler’s strategy is ingenious. The seed deposited in a cozy nook on the high branches of the host tree sprouts making full use of the sunlight up there, which a seed falling on the dark forest floor would lack. The little seedling striving towards the sun in the canopy escapes the deer and the elephant that would have browsed it down, had it been growing in the undergrowth.
As the seedling’s roots snake down the sides of the host tree—gaining strength and structural support from the trunk—its leafy branches begin to sprawl over the canopy. By the time the growing strangler fig’s mesh of roots reach the ground, the plant is poised to exploit light and soil making the best of both worlds: the sky and the earth.
The host now has little chance. Over-topped and shaded by the fig’s branches, enveloped by the fig’s tangle of roots fused into a new trunk, subdued by the fig’s roots in the earth, the host dies, rots away, leaving a hollow in the centre. Where one tree stood, then two, only one stands again: a great fig tree.
The leaves, twigs, and stems of fig trees exude a milky latex. Young leaves are protected by distinctive stipules that fall away leaving scars on the twigs. Using these traits and other features of the leaves and figs, each species of fig tree (in the genus Ficus) can be identified. About 90 Ficus species are known from India, with the centres of diversity being northeast India, Peninsular India, and the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
The biological significance of fig trees in the forest is immense. A single Ficus tree may produce hundreds to thousands or even tens of thousands of fruits, which when ripe attract wildlife from insects to birds and bats to monkeys. Many fig species fruit aseasonally, which means that among the trees distributed across the forest there are always some Ficus trees with ripe fruits. During lean times when few other trees are in fruit, the figs provide vital food and are therefore considered a keystone resource. Fig trees are also renowned for the intricate relationships between pollinating fig wasps and the trees — each species of wasp tied to a particular fig species in its unique life cycle—and between the fig tree and the various animals that eat their fruits and disperse the seeds far and wide.
FICUS TSJAHELA
The Ficus tsjahela is a stately and lofty fig tree with sprawling branches under which often hang large, buzzing hives of rock bees. The trunk, typical for a strangler, made of vertical roots that fused as the tree grew, may often be hollow as the host tree may have died and rotted away. The hollow may stretch from the base of the tree, where mouse deer may hide, to the very top where bats roost by day, even opening to the skies above. The figs are small for such a large tree, but when ripe attract throngs of wild birds and mammals. One can spend hours under such a tree astonished at how it brims with life and vitality. Even a single tree adds immeasurably to the countryside or forest where it stands. Illustration by Nirupa Rao.
FICUS MICROCARPA
The spectacular dome of a Ficus microcarpa canopy is hard to miss in the rainforest. The vertical roots that have massed into a trunk mark it as a strangler. When the tree bursts into fruit, the branches are laden with thousands of small ripe figs. The leaves and twigs shiver and shake with the movements and frantic feeding frenzy of dozens of birds—barbets, hornbills, bulbuls, fairy-bluebirds, starlings, green-pigeons. Troops of bonnet macaques and lion-tailed macaques, too, visit the tree. The animals will then carry the seeds away, depositing seeds with their droppings on other trees, from where new strangler figs may arise. This species also grows on rock faces, with the roots snaking around the boulders and the branches letting down hanging roots to provide additional support.
Excerpted with permission from Pillars of Life: Magnificent Trees of the Western Ghats by Divya Mudappa and T R Shankar Raman, published by Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore, 2018. Price: Rs 975.
The book is available for purchase from: https://www.instamojo.com/NCF/pillars-of-life
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About the contributors
Divya Mudappa
