Flora of North America species comparison

The green links below add additional plants to the comparison table. Blue links lead to other Web sites.
enable glossary links

Ficus benghalensis

Ficus

banyan tree, Indian banyan

fig, figuier
Habit Trees, evergreen, to 30 m. Roots aerial, often descending to ground level and forming pillar-roots Bark of trunks and older branches brown, smooth. Trees, shrubs, or woody vines, evergreen or deciduous, commonly epiphytic or scandent as seedlings; sap milky.
Branchlets

puberulent, glabrescent in age.

Leaves

blade ovate, 10-30 × 7-20 cm, leathery, base cordate, margins entire, apex obtuse;

surfaces abaxially puberulent, adaxially glabrous;

basal veins (2-)3-4 pairs, 1/3-1/2 length of blade, reticulations regular;

lateral veins 5-6(-7) pairs.

blade: margins entire (lobed in F. carica), rarely dentate;

venation pinnate or nearly palmate.
Inflorescences

small, borne on inner walls of fruitlike and fleshy receptacle (syconium).
Flowers

staminate and pistillate on same plant.
Staminate flowers

sessile or pedicellate;

calyx of 2-6 sepals;

stamens 1-2, straight.
Pistillate flowers

sessile;

ovary 1-locular;

style unbranched, lateral.
Syconia

paired, sessile, orange or red, depressed-globose, 1.5-2 × 2-2.5 mm, pubescent; subtending bracts ovate, 3-7 mm, puberulous;

ostiole closed by 3 flat or nearly umbonate apical bracts 3-4 mm wide.

globose to pyriform;

achenes completely embedded in enlarged, fleshy, common receptacle and accessible by apical opening (ostiole) closed by small scales.
Terminal

buds surrounded by pair of stipules.
x

= 13.

Ficus benghalensis

Ficus
Phenology Flowering all year.
Habitat Disturbed thickets
Elevation 0-10 m (0-0 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
FL; Asia (native to Pakistan and India) [Introduced in North America]
[BONAP county map]
from USDA
Tropics and subtropics; chiefly Asian
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Species ca. 750 (10 in the flora).

Worldwide, Ficus is one of the largest genera of flowering plants. Members of the genus are usually treated as a separate tribe within Moraceae because of their unique inflorescence and wasp-dependent system of pollination.

The floral characters (especially of the American species, which are quite uniform) are exceedingly difficult to use or of little value in distinguishing species. Therefore they are not used in the species descriptions. The form of the syconium, however, is often significant and taxonomically useful.

Ficus pseudocarica Miquel was cited by P. A. Munz (1974) as an occasional escape in the Santa Barbara region. It is not cited by other workers, and I have seen no specimens.

Ficus rubiginosa Desfontaines ex Ventenat cultivar `Florida', a species native to Australia, has recently been reported as naturalized in the Los Angeles area (Michael O'Brien, pers. comm.). It is a small tree with rusty-pubescent branchlets, petiole, and abaxial leaf surfaces; ovate to elliptic-oblong, leathery, 10-cm leaves; and paired axillary, globose, warty, rusty-pubescent syconia 1 cm in diameter. Vernacular names include Port Jackson fig, rusty fig, and littleleaf fig.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Key
1. Plants climbing, attaching by nodal adventitious roots, or trailing; leaves dimorphic.
F. pumila
1. Plants erect or essentially so; leaves monomorphic.
→ 2
2. Leaf blade palmately 3–5-lobed, pubescent.
F. carica
2. Leaf blade entire, glabrous (abaxially puberulent in F. benghalensis).
→ 3
3. Apex of leaf blade abruptly long-caudate or long-acuminate, ca. 1/2 length of blade.
F. religiosa
3. Apex of leaf blade obtuse to acute or if caudate, then much shorter in proportion to blade.
→ 4
4. Basal leaf veins (2–)3–4 pairs; fruit pubescent.
F. benghalensis
4. Basal leaf veins 1(–2) pairs; fruit glabrous.
→ 5
5. Leaf blade with more than 10 uniform lateral veins, these regularly spaced.
→ 6
5. Leaf blade with fewer than 10 lateral veins, or if more than 10, these not uniformly spaced.
→ 7
6. Leaf blade 4–6(–11) cm; stipules 0.8–1.2 cm; syconia nearly globose.
F. benjamina
6. Leaf blade 9–30 cm; stipules 3–10 cm; syconia oblong-ovoid.
F. elastica
7. Syconia on peduncles (2–)5–10(–15) mm.
→ 8
7. Syconia sessile or subsessile, rarely with peduncles to 5 mm.
→ 9
8. Petiole (0.7–)1.5–6 cm; syconia spotted; base of leaf blade usually cordate or rounded to obtuse.
F. citrifolia
8. Petiole 0.2–1 cm; syconia not spotted; base of leaf blade usually acute or cuneate to obtuse.
F. americana
9. Leaf blade 6–12(–15) cm; syconia 6–15 mm diam.
F. aurea
9. Leaf blade 3–11 cm; syconia 5–6 mm diam.
F. microcarpa
Source FNA vol. 3. FNA vol. 3.
Parent taxa Moraceae > Ficus Moraceae
Sibling taxa
F. americana, F. aurea, F. benjamina, F. carica, F. citrifolia, F. elastica, F. microcarpa, F. pumila, F. religiosa
Subordinate taxa
F. americana, F. aurea, F. benghalensis, F. benjamina, F. carica, F. citrifolia, F. elastica, F. microcarpa, F. pumila, F. religiosa
Name authority Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 2: 1059. (1753) Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 2: 1059. 175: Gen. Pl. ed. 5, 482. (1754)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



Type/paste one or more Latin names into the boxes above; matching taxa will show up below the box as you type. You can use the up/down arrow keys to move through the list.

(If the plant you're looking for doesn't show up in the auto-complete list, that means it either isn't described in Flora of North America yet, or it's listed under a synonym. And please note that Flora of North America is still missing several plant families, including Apiaceae, Boraginaceae, and Polemoniaceae.)

Choose a data source: Flora of North America

The species comparison tool is brought to you by:
Northwest Wildflowers