• Question: Where does strangler fig trees grow?

    Asked by anon-44771 to Amelia, Izzy, Sarah on 19 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Amelia Frizell-Armitage

      Amelia Frizell-Armitage answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      The strangler fig is a tropical plant that grows in the rainforests. Rainforests have very tightly packed trees and other plants, so the forest floors can be very dark. The strangler fig is very well adapted to get around this problem.

      Their seeds are deposited by birds (when they poo) in the top branches of a tall tree (I’ll call this the host tree). The seed then grows its roots downwards which surround the host tree, and eventually strangle it. At the same time shoots from the strangler fig seed grow upwards. Because it is right at the top of the tree if finds light very quickly. If the seed had just grown on the forest floor where it is dark it would never have got enough light to grow!

    • Photo: Isabel Webb

      Isabel Webb answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      The strangler fig is not a single type of plant, but actually several types of plant – all related in the figus genus (genus is a way of classifying plants. It comes above species in the classifications).

      The strangler figs all share the same features. They grow in tropical and subtropical areas (so near the equator in rainforests, where it is nice and warm). The seeds from these trees don’t land and germinate in the soil. Instead, they land on branches of other trees where there is more sunlight. They then germinate, sending their roots downwards and wrapping them around the tree they landed on – so ‘strangling’ the tree. They also send their shoots up the tree, reaching for the sunlight above the top of the big rainforest trees.

      Sometimes the tree that they strangle dies – and just leaves a hollow shell that the fig is wrapped around.

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