Ficus rubiginosa? obliqua?

[Jerry Meislik]

This Ficus was grown by a friend from seed that he collected in Australia. Unfortunately there is no record of where he collected the seed.
My guess at the moment is that it is rubiginosa or maybe obliqua.
I have been growing the tree in a plant room for 25 years!
If anyone can ID this I would be very appreciative.
The tree is about 70cm in height. The leaves without the petiole can be 17cm long!
Jerry

[Hector Johnson]

If you could get a closeup of the leaves I could have a go at it.

[Jerry Meislik]

Hector,
The attached picture shows two F.microcarpa leaves on the left, then the leaf in question. This is an older leaf. The next leaf to the right is a new leaf which is not yet fully matured and is wider than the older leaf. On the extreme right is the same leaf from my bonsai - reduced by defoliation.
Appreciate your thoughts and others ideas as well.
Warmest regards from snowy Montana.
Jerry

[Hector Johnson]

Based on the shape of the leaf I'd say it's probably not rubiginosa, but perhaps obliqua... perhaps, not definitely, but likely to be Ficus obliqua, for reasons I've set out below.

Rubiginosa has a lot more lateral veins in the leaves, see the scanned image below, and is usually more lanceolate in form than the leaves in your photo.
F. obliqua has 8 or 9, depending upon how you count them; F. rubiginosa has about 16 or 17. Your leaves look to have about 9 from the detail I can see.

Other info that might help you: Rubiginosa grows the leaves on its terminal shoots in a rosette pattern; obliqua tends more to a spaced distribution along the shoot.

Unfortunately, the colour on the back of the leaves is no indicator. The two leaves in these scans are both from F. rub. yet differ markedly. The trees are growing side by side in the park across the road. One leaf blade is 90mm long and typical of the size of all of the leaves on the tree. The other is 165mm long and equally typical on its host tree.

F rub leaves 01.jpg

The leaves in your photo are almost oval in shape, though the smaller one on the right (from a bonsai) seems quite pointed. I note that large, rank leaves on my F. obliqua are almost oval in shape if I let them go but tend more towards lanceolate if they are reduced in size through leaf pruning and defoliation. You may be seeing larger leaves than we do on F. obliqua simply because you cannot replicate the intensity of sunlight we get here in sub-tropical Australia?

I hope this helps.

[Jerry Meislik]

Hector,
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and information.
I am going to label this Ficus obliqua since it has only about 9-10 main veins. Its leaves do not grow in a rosette and interestingly it does show a bit of a tip on the leaf on the bonsai specimen but the leaves are rounder on a rooted cutting growing wildly in a pot without bonsai culture!
The light affecting the size of the leaf is definitely a factor in my plant room. There is no way for me to get anything like full sun in Australia.
On a bit of different tack - in checking 3 different Ficus labeled "rubiginosa" in my collection none have the number of main veins. Most of these are from an Australian seed source that apparently is not reliable. On two other orders I received a package of dust that was supposed to be Ficus seed. Naturally the dust did not sprout anything!
Thanks again for your time and help.
Jerry