Office Ficus ID

[Joshua]

Hello,
A colleague of mine has been growing this ficus on his desk from a small cutting ever since he started working and has taken it with him from job to job.
He's leaving our company soon and I plan on taking a few cuttings.

At a rough guess the leaves are 10-15 cm long. I can measure them when I'm there next time.
The bark is dark and has this rough stringy look. Lots of little twiggy dead branches especially nearer the base.

He has no idea what species it is. Curious to know if someone on here might have an idea.

ficus.jpeg

ficus bark.jpeg

ficus leaves.jpeg

[tgward]

dunno but looks like the very common 'sad ,unhealthy ,desperate indoor' plant

[Beano]

I didn’t think ficus had bark like that.


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[Joshua]

dunno but looks like the very common 'sad ,unhealthy ,desperate indoor' plant

I had this thought to but didn't want to say it out loud.
I took a cutting anyway and I'll see how it does at my place. Not off to a good start so far .

I didn’t think ficus had bark like that.

Perhaps a sad desperate indoor ficus can have bark like this, exposed to air-con and shade its whole life ?

Looking at the cutting, so far I'm leaning towards Benjamina which is one of the few I'm familiar with, even though I was convinced otherwise before.

[Bougy Fan]

Not a benji. Needs some love whatever it is.

[Joshua]

Got a nice little bit of growth from the cutting. It seems happier on the balcony than it's parent plant did in the office .
Still not sure what it is. Agree definitely not a Benji.
I have one of those super-market Ficus Microcarpa (according to the label when I got it) which is obviously grafted because when I let it go there are clearly two different things growing - some branches have smaller leaves that are more compact and closer together. Other branches and their leaves look like it could be the same thing as this cutting.

2022-10-01 a.jpeg

2022-10-01 b.jpeg

[TimIAm]

There are quite a few things that make this look like not a fig. The two big things for me are parts of the stipule still attached to the plant after new leaves have already opened. But I'm not sure if the same thing is on the new plant(?), or it's part of the old plant in distress. Also, the leaf attachment doesn't look like a typical ficus. Typically with a ficus, you have a lighter coloured midrib (on the top surface) and where the petiole attaches to the midrib it looks more continuous. Also, on a ficus you would have the petiole or the young branches dropping completely (leaving a concave mark in the trunk), instead of having parts still attached when they die off.

All of the things above could just be because the original plant was stressed out and your plant may look different. A plant in distress may have different looking trunk, leaves, responses to die-back etc. Not saying that's what it is, just saying that a plant in distress may react or appear not typical.

One of the things I look at when I'm looking at park trees is what the stipule looks like. If you can be bothered, take a higher quality photo of the stipules on your plant. I also can't see what your leaves look like. If they look exactly like the original, I'd say not-a-ficus.

Use image search and look at some similar looking species to your plant and look carefully at how the leaf stem and mid-vein are different to yours:
- Ficus benjamina
- Ficus microcarpa
- Ficus macrophylla
- Ficus elastica

The above list are the possible Ficus species provided by Pl@ntNet for your plant.

The only other thing I can suggest is cutting the plant and seeing if there is a white latex, or maybe you remember when you took the cutting? Problem is, not all ficus drip latex, some you can hardly tell.

When I use Pl@ntNet https://identify.plantnet.org/the-plant-list/identify it's better if you provide it with a nice close up picture of the leaves, the stipule and some of the branching structure to give the algorithm something to work with.

The easiest way to confirm a ficus are fruit, then presence of latex, then looking at the stipule, then looking at the leaves.

All that aside, don't let any of this take away from the fact you've got a nice healthy tree which has a bit of history. If later you are convinced it's not a ficus, Pl@ntNet should give you some other good suggestions.

[Rintar]

The leaf tip reminds me of Benjamina and there are a few varieties/varient of it so I wouldn't rule it out when I get back from holidays I'll have a look at my microcarpa and compare it was given to me and Im growing it so don't pay much attention to it yet.

[Joshua]

Thanks for the detailed an informative replies!
I got a few more photos.

2022-10-02 at 8.13.24 AM.jpeg

If I understood correctly here is the stipule preceding the new growth and there aren't any on the opened leaves.

2022-10-02 at 8.13.24 AM (1).jpeg

Leaf stems and branch/trunk.

2022-10-02 at 8.13.23 AM.jpeg

Latex.

2022-10-02 at 8.13.23 AM (1).jpeg

Here's the supermarket Ficus Microcarpa that my partner and I bought as a houseplant (we named it Beyonce ). Apparently it would be two varieties of Microcarpa. One a dwarf variety for the smaller denser leaves. You can see on the bottom right one of the suckers with longer internodes, larger leaves which are a bit more pointy. Although they look a bit different I feel like they resemble my cutting more than the benji I have.

Now I'm tempted to take a cutting off a branch from the dwarf part of the houseplant to have a non-grafted copy.

[TimIAm]

I'm pretty certain that's a Ficus Elastica based on the vertical lines on the trunk and the large amount of latex produced and the leaves match; Elastica typically has that pointy tip to the leaves (as well as Benjamina mentioned by Rintar).

Great post here https://adamaskwhy.com/2014/09/24/this- ... -subjects/ if you like to read, it's about "ginseng" microcarpa grafted onto microcarpa trees. I think it gives some good insight into your tree. I guess if you layered or root pruned it, then it wouldn't match it's name

[shibui]

Ficus elastica is certainly popular as an indoor plant but would normally have much larger leaves. It is always possible that conditions can change leaf size but I don't think it likely that this one is rubber plant.
It is most definitely a Ficus of some type but there are many different species and varieties so it can be really hard to definitively ID ficus without fruit.

The name is not really important as most ficus are treated similar and will respond to similar methods.

[Rintar]

agree with Shibui above and most likely a microcarpa of which there again are many variants and environment's can have big differences