Operation Wildflower
  • Home
  • Albums
  • Links
    • Botanical Gardens
    • OWF Sites
    • Public Parks, Gardens and Reserves
    • Reference Sites
    • Private Parks, Gardens and Reserves
  • Information
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Articles
    • Plant Records
      • Aloes
      • Bulbs
      • Climbers
      • Cycads
      • Euphorbias
      • Ferns
      • Grasses
      • Herbs
      • Orchids
      • Parasites
      • Shrubs
      • Succulents
      • Trees
    • Sources of Information
Home Home » GENERA D-F » Ficus » Ficus ilicina
Back to Category Overview
Total images in all categories: 10,366
Total number of hits on all images: 5,069,233

Ficus ilicina

Ficus ilicina
Start View full size
[Please activate JavaScript in order to see the slideshow]
Previous Previous
Image 18 of 54  
Next Next
Image 20 of 54  
  • Ficus cordata subsp. cordata bearing figs
  • Ficus cordata subsp. cordata leaf
  • Ficus cordata subsp. cordata leaves
  • Ficus cordata subsp. cordata old and battered but still
  • Ficus cordata subsp. cordata stem with crown gall
  • Ficus glumosa figlets
  • Ficus glumosa leaves
  • Ficus glumosa stems
  • Ficus ilicina
  • Ficus ilicina leaves
  • Ficus ilicina near a stem-tip
  • Ficus ilicina rock-climbing
  • Ficus ingens
  • Ficus ingens art
  • Ficus ingens doing the twist and the bulge
  • Ficus ingens evidence of a quest
  • Ficus ingens fantasy world

Image information

Description

It takes many years for Ficus ilicina to spread itself over a vertical, bare rockface in this fashion. The rock-splitting fig shows its white bark where the leaves don’t cover them. Hugging the rock, even plastered upon it, the tree uses space not easily taken by the other plants of the vicinity.

Who knows whether all that is visible up there, like writing on the wall belongs to one plant? (Might it spell your name?) The veld retains some mysteries, divulging them in instalments. This time aloof from those that walked the long route through this Naries kloof near Springbok.

Not shy of full sun, the west-facing cliff where the tree is perched ensures more than enough of that. The seasonal watercourse not far away compensates, probably has some fig roots right in its bed, benefiting directly from every inundation.

The red figlets of F. ilicina grow solitary or in pairs on short stalks or sessile from leaf axils of terminal branchlets. The hairless or downy figs are only about 1 cm in diameter.

F. ilicina is a resident of the north-western arid parts of South Africa and more widespread in Namibia. If you meet it in Namibia, you might point at it and impress your companions by calling it omupendarwa, its name in the language of a local tribe, the Herero. In German it is called Kletterfeige.

The species lives in kloofs and on cliffs or rocky outcrops. It is not considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century (Mannheimer and Curtis, (Eds.), 2009; Coates Palgrave, 2002; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).

Hits
161
Photographer
Thabo Maphisa
Author
Ivan Latti
 
Back to Category Overview
Powered by JoomGallery