Ficus nervosa var pubinervis photographed by Shuai LIAO on Orchid Island off the south east coast of Taiwan. All photos and information courtesy of Shuai LIAO. Note that two different individual plants are illustrated in the photographs. Collection # 20190262 (top 3 photos) and Collection #02190264 (bottom 4 photos)
During the Pleistocene ice ages, the island of Taiwan was connected by land to the Asian mainland and therefore shares a similar flora and fauna.
However many of the small islands surrounding Taiwan were formed by volcanoes and therefore were never connected by land either to Taiwan or to the mainland. They have therefore developed a distinctive island flora and fauna which is often shared with the oceanic islands of the Philippines and of southern Japan. The majority of these isolated island plants arrived either as drift seeds or were brought as seeds in the guts of pigeons and giant fruit bats.
The result is that the island of Taiwan itself hosts the continental Ficus nervosa subspecies nervosa whilst two small islands off the SE coast of Taiwan, Green Island and Orchid island host Ficus nervosa subspecies pubinervis which is also found on many islands in SE Asia (see map below).
According to Professor Hsy-Yu Tzeng of Taiwan, Ficus nervosa var nervosa and F. nervosa var pubinervis have the following differences. F.n. pubinervis has larger figs, shorter peduncles and white hairy stipules as well as differences in seed morphology. These differences are probably sufficient for them to be split into 2 separate species but this first needs to be confirmed by comparison of DNA. Information thanks to Shuai LIAO.
