AusBonsai

hey people,

while watering my trees today i noticed this on my ficus benj. it looks like a fruit or seed pod or something like that, it is solid and there is another one just behind it a lot smaller but growing just the same. it is circular in growth and has a couple of dots on it. its growing from the branch so i presume it is, never seen it before though, just after some confirmation
cheers.

jamie

I have these also but upon searching i found this

There are over 600 species of Ficus, most of them tropical and evergreen, although some, most notably F. carica, the common fig, are deciduous. Ficus produces a unique "fruit" which is actually an inverted flower. Not all Ficus produce edible fruit.

thanks chris, i am not sure whether it is an inverted flower bud or not, i have never seen these on them before, it is like a rock though, solid as?

jamie

after a bit of searching i have found they do fruit, an interesting thing about ficus benj. is that they need a certain type of wasp to pollinate the tree to get them to fruit, this is the tree that has given me grief as every time i try and move it i get nailed by wasps as they are always nesting in it, no matter how many times i move them. i will try find out what sort of wasp they are and get a few pics


jamie

heres a link explaining how pollinator wasps will make ya ficus benj. bare fruit


http://www.hku.hk/ecology/staffhp/rtc/c ... s-1986.pdf


jamie

Hi Jamie

I may be wrong as there are so many different types of figs and I may be getting mixed up, but not only do I believe that Benji's have figs, but I think different types will actually have different colour figs.

If you fancy a bit of reading about figs, have a look at this site
http://www.figweb.org/

Of course, Jerry's web site is a good read and repository of knowledge,
http://www.bonsaihunk.us/

If you want I can list a few more

As an aside, break the fig apart if you want to look at the flower

Regards
Steve

cheers steve,

the links will be handy, i wil have to look into breaking one of the figs apart as i wouldnt mind seeing the flower, it must be small though

jamie

Hey Jamie Benji's do produce fruit and are quite easily growable from seed ,met a guy up here recently who has been propagating his own bonsai (for approx 30 yrs) from seed . I got to bore him to tears with a million questions (he really didn't mind) I had asked him about Moreton Bays and Benjis and the wasp thing and his reply was I don't know have a look at my figs that I grew from seed and ask them Mate his results speak for themselves ,his collection is fairly huge to say the least .
Cheers
Tony

Congratulations on your benjamina producing a fruit/figs. All Ficus will produce figs at some time. Inside the fig are hundreds of individual flowers.
The ball is a fig, probably edible, but likely not tasty. Inside will be small seeds that will be infertile unless you happen to live where their are native figs and fig wasps. A fig wasp is tiny, only a few mm. in size and does not sting.
Benjamina in my experience does not fruit as often as other species of Ficus but that is very variable trait.
I do grow unusual Ficus from seed. You can look here to see how.
http://www.bonsaihunk.us/recent.html
Click on the bar for growing from seed.
Jerry
http://www.bonsaihunk.us

interesting with the fig wasp and that hey, i dont know if it means i have viable seeds in the figs though, i thought the wasps that have nested in my tree were the right ones but after reading that they are only a few mm in length i highly doubt these are the wasp, i think the ones in my tree are paper wasp, they are about 10-15 mm in length if that, and are black, so not really small enough to get the fig seed viable one would think, although they do have a long enough stinger thing to penetrate the small fig on the tree

tony, did you get any photo's??? would love to see some

jerry, thanks mate, i have been reading your site for about an hour tonight, its a great help for techniques and info great references too
as for benji not fruiting much i have to agree, i have had this tree going on 5 years now (it was one of my very first trees ) and this is the first time it has shown fruit, i did recently cut back quite hard on it so this could have possibly spurred it on as it come back very strong.

i will have to get a picture of these wasps that are nesting in the tree, i dont seem to be able to get rid of them either, and i dont think they are the ones that will fertilise the seeds.


cheers for the info guys


jamie

If there is a nest it is not a fig wasp but some other type of wasp.
Jerry
http://www.bonsaihunk.us