Ficus lanata is an uncommon climbing liana of mountain forest in Borneo, Sumatra and Java.
Ficus lanata is locally common in the forest at Kinabalu Park HQ (1,500 m) in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.
All the photos in this post were taken in the carpark next to the entrance to the Kinabalu Mountain Garden at Park HQ.
Corner and Berg (2005) considered that Ficus lanata was so close in morphology to Ficus villosa that it might be considered to be a variety.
The photos below show that the change in the leaf morphology from bathyphyll to acrophyll go through two distinct phases.
Stage 01 is similar to the bathyphyll leaves of Ficus urnigera
Stage 02 is similar to the bathyphyll leaves of Ficus villosa, except that the Stage 02 leaves have thicker stronger and longer petioles than Ficus villosa bathyphyll leaves so the leaves are held away from the trunk of the host tree not pressed close to the trunk as with Ficus villosa.
This indicates that Ficus lanata is more closely related to Ficus urnigera than Ficus villosa.
For a comparison of the acrophyll and bathyphyll leaves of the two most common trunk climbing lianas in Borneo Ficus sagittata and Ficus villosa use this link.
