Ficus caulocarpa is one of the most common large strangling figs in secondary forest and open areas of Borneo but can also grow as a hemi-epiphyte in tall virgin forest.
The photos below show examples of several different individual F. caulocarpa fig trees taken at different sites in Borneo at different stages of growth.
Many thanks to Anthea Phillipps and Chun Xing Wong for photos and information
Growth Stages of Ficus caulocarpa
- The Ficus caulocarpa fig seed lodges in a knot hole high in the canopy of a host tree
- Once the seedling is established the seedling drops down multiple roots to the ground.
- These multiple roots coalesce into a dense thicket and anastomose (join together) into tight bundles of roots surrounding the trunk of the host.
- The roots act like an iron cage preventing the host from growing (expanding its trunk) and the host eventually dies .
- By the time the host dies the fig has enough roots in the ground to be self supporting without any need of a host.
- The description above is common to the growth habits of many strangling figs in Borneo.
- However in Borneo, Ficus caulocarpa is exceptional in the density of the supporting roots and the way they interweave small diameter roots to form what I term as a pseudo-trunk (false trunk).
- Pseudo-trunks are common in many African fig trees in the Ficus thonningii complex (Mugomo) ) which grow in the seasonally dry savannah habitats of south and east Africa.
- It is hypothesized here that pseudo-trunks have evolved in African fig trees to provide protection from elephants attacking the bark of these fig trees for food.
- Between 40,000 to 10,000 years ago large areas of South and East Borneo were covered in seasonally dry savannah grassland and joined by land bridges to Asian continent.
- Therefore it is possible that the pseudo-trunk of F. caulocarpa is a relic of a past period when large herbivores such as elephants and rhinos roamed the the seasonally dry savannahs of Borneo.
