Climbing fig, whose flowers are never seen,can be grown from cuttings with rewarding results By Normita Thongtham
My mother, who is visiting from the Philippines, is wondering why the climbing fig (Ficus pumila , or teen took kae in Thai) covering our fence suddenly has many fruit but she had not seen any flowers.
I told her that the green, pear-shaped "fruit" are actually the flowers. However,they are neither called fruit nor flowers,but syconia (singular syconium).
Figs are one of nature's greatest wonders.They bear tiny white flowers but no matter what species, no one ever sees them because they are clustered inside an outer covering, hidden from the human eye.
The only creature which sees the flowers is a special kind of wasp, which pollinates them by entering a small opening at the bottom of the syconium to lay its eggs.You will know that the flowers have been pollinated when the syconium becomes swollen. As it ripens, its colour turns from green to red, yellow, yellow-green, orange or maroon, depending on the fig's species.
Birds like to eat figs. They then scatter the seeds through their droppings. If you have been wondering why suddenly there is a banyan tree (Ficus religiosa ) seedling growing in your garden or on the crack in your fence, now you know how it turned up there.
Some seeds are deposited on the branches of trees, where they grow up to eventually strangle the host trees to death and take their place. You can see a perfect example of this in the grounds of Wat Bovornnives Voraviharn near Bang Lamphu in Bangkok, where a huge tree no less than 60 years old is now almost completely taken over by a strangler fig.
Thailand has several native species of figs. In the wild they can be seen growing near waterfalls or along streams. Most are non-edible, although some Thais in the North and Northeast found that the tasteless, unripe syconia of Ficus auriculata ,known locally as dua wa , could be eaten when cut in half, soaked in water and then cooked into kaeng som , a spicy sweetsour vegetable soup. In the South crunchy native figs are eaten with kanom jeen nam ya , or fresh vermicelli with fish curry topping.
Few Thais, however, like to eat the edible fig,Ficus carica . In last week's 'Green Fingers', I mentioned that my husband,ML Charuphant, likes fresh fig and to solve the problem of root rot and ensure that he gets a steady supply of the fruit, he planted figs in plastic baskets right outside his office in the Kasetsart University compound. Whenever a fig ripens, he gets to eat it fresh from the tree.
Except for birds and squirrels, he has no competition. His workers dare not eat the fruit, as they believe the filaments inside the fig are worms. They think that as the wasp entered the syconium to lay its eggs,the larvae would have nowhere else to go but live or die inside the fig. I say that if the larvae had died inside the fruit, then there would be no wasps left to propagate the figs.
Not all figs get pollinated. For years my climbing fig has been bearing syconia,which grow to nearly the size of a small hen's egg and remain on the plant for several months without being pollinated.This could be because the wasp that pollinates this particular species is lacking in our area.
Climbing fig is not easy to propagate from cuttings but once it is established, it is one of the easiest figs to grow and maintain. It thrives in almost all kinds of soil with good drainage and a sunny area. If planting it along a fence or wall, space plants 20 to 30cm apart. However, make sure that the fence or wall on which you want it to climb is not painted, as climbing fig seems to be put off by a painted surface.
Post your comments or questions on the readers'forum at www.thaigreenfingers.com, or by email to normita@thaigreenfingers.com.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment