This Ficus tarennifolia is a small tree growing at the far end of the Mountain Garden at Kinabalu Park HQ. Ficus tarrennifolia is in Ficus Section Sycocarpus which means it is dioecious with separate male and female trees. Male trees normally do not produce edible figs, only pollinating fig wasps. Because they are not eaten male figs normally rot on the forest floor around the tree -so one might think that this Ficus tarennifolia is a male tree with all the rotting figs around the base-but if you look at the photo closely you will seed that the rotten figs are full of seeds. Therefore this fig is a female tree ! The reason the figs are rotting must be that the Mountain Garden is completely fenced in which means that the normal dispersers of F. tarennifolia, ground mammals such as mouse deer, pigs and deer cannot enter the enclosure. NOTE: When we visited in January 2018, this individual F. tarrenifolia which has fruited almost continuously for the past 30 years had disappeared but we did find several small seedlings growing in the Mountain Garden.
