Strangler figs and cauliflory
I bumped into my first strangler fig while in the Australian
rainforest, and I was blown away by the intricate network of roots that
made up the tree's trunk. I learned that a strangler fig begins
its life when a bird eats a fig fruit and deposits the seeds high in a
canopy tree of another species. The baby fig first sends up
leaves of its own, then drops roots down along the trunk of the host
tree until they reach the forest soil.
Then begins the
struggle. Usually, a young tree would have to wait patiently in
the shadow of a canopy tree until the mammoth fell to give the
youngster a little light and space to grow. But the strangler fig
has cheated and begun at the top, so it is able to overshadow the
canopy of the host tree and girdle the host's roots within about a
century. By that point, the strangler is strong enough to stand
on its own, so the rotting host tree simply provides a tasty meal of stump
dirt for the
strangler's roots. Walking through a tropical forest, you will
often come across hollow strangler figs like the
tree Maggie was playing inside in a previous post.
There are several
species of strangler figs found in the world's tropics and subtropics,
and Monteverde has different dominant fig species in each habitat
type. The Florida
Strangler Fig (Ficus tuerckheimii)
is the common species around the elevation of Monteverde itself, and is
the one I drew most often.
While Costa Rica's strangler figs bear their fruits on twigs like most
trees do, strangler figs will always be linked to cauliflory and
ramiflory in my mind. Take a look at how the Australian strangler
figs attach their fruits directly to the side of the tree trunk:
In case you can't read
my miniscule writing, here is a quick description of this odd growth
These fruits grow out of the trunk of the
tree in clusters. While the result is quite odd, making the tree
appear to be covered with little green mushrooms, the mechanism is
simple enough. Stubby twigs are visible at the base of the
fruits, just like the twigs which grow out of the trunks of cherries
and other trees at times. This tree just pours its energy into
letting these tiny twigs reproduce.
The base of the tree has a relatively sparse covering of fruits, which
becomes thicker further up the tree. The branches are nearly
completely covered with fruit clusters.
My book tells me that this is an adaptaton found in many tropical
rainforest species from different genera, but is never found in the
subtropical rainforest. The phenomenon is known as cauliflory
when the fruits are on the trunk and ramiflory when the fruits are on
the branches. The hypothesis has been presented that cauliflory
is a way to make use of understory pollinators.
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Later, I came across a few
alternative explanations of ramiflory and cauliflory. Since the
fruits --- like this cauliflorous Zygia I found in Costa Rica ---
are always large, some scientists suspect the adaptation came about to
prevent twigs from breaking under the fruits' weight. Others
posit that cauliflory may have evolved to allow terrestrial animals
access to the fruits for surer dispersal. Whatever the cause,
ramiflory and cauliflory always make me smile at the odd fruits
sprouting out of the trunks of trees.
love this particular Quaker church and community. The singing is
powerfully spiritual, the silence is useful for contemplation. The
messages and stories that are told after silence are amazing. The
one that is stuck with me presently is about how it is more enjoyable
to give than to receive. This wasn't exactly speech with the intent
of motivating us to give. It was lightly the fact that often it is
kind of hard for the receivers. The vision that went with this
message was of givers and receivers with joined hands, one up, one
down, all in an active chain.