Greetings! Thanks for the warm reception onto the forum! I couldn’t find much on this particular topic so I figured I’d ask it’s a new thread.
Does anyone grow Ficus Sycamorus? I have been interested in getting one just to say I have it. I’ve heard the fruit is ok, but probably inferior to most cultivated figs. I mostly want it for the historical/cultural interest. I have been thinking about trying to start a “fruit of the Bible” collection. I already have figs, am planning to order pomegranate soon, I grow grapes but would probably need to go with vinifera if I want to be accurate. I’ve heard arbequina olives are hardy in my zone.
I’m sure “sycamore fig” is too narrow a topic. Does anyone have any species or varieties they grow more for the historical significance or “cool factor” than the actual fruit quality?
I tried growing it - twice. And twice it died over winter. I had it indoors on a sunny window. It still didn’t make it.
I know someone who grows it in the LA area and gets a lot of growth each year.
Mine was the self fertile Israeli variety too which is supposed to be more cold hardy.
It is definitely zone 10 or above.
What @ramv said, minus experience growing it
It gets huge also, so I don’t think it would work in a pot. I just found it and was curious but my curiosity was immediately crushed.
They are tropical. I know of two places where people grow it, ECHO in Fort Myers, FL and FloridaFruitGeek does in Gainsville, FL. But the guy in Gainsville buries the graft union (he is using it for rootstock) below the soil to protect it more. Would be hard to grow outside of Florida and SoCal.
I have two strangler figs (f. Aurea). They are native to South Florida. Currently they are potted, but once I find a good tree for them to strangle, I’ll put them in the ground.
Well darn. I was hoping y’all would be encouraging. I know it’s a long shot plant. I’m especially discouraged to hear about it dying inside with good sun. I was hoping it could work either in a large greenhouse or big bay window. (I have neither of which currently, but plans in the work for both eventually.
I think I mainly wanted it because I was so hurt when I learned my whole childhood I pictured the wrong tree while singing “zaccheaus was a wee little man” lol. It made me curious what the tree was like he actually climbed.
Well now that my dreams are crushed, are there any fruits of historical/cultural significance that you do grow for that reason?
If you want to grow a fig indoors, you could grow rubber fig (f. Elastica) or fiddle leaf fig (f. Lyrata). They are very popular indoor plants. Rubber figs have some historical importance (they use the aerial roots to make bridges in India). Not quite what you are looking for, but they are pretty plants.
Speaking of figs…growing up in the deep south, I didn’t know there were other type fig trees than the ones we think of usually spoken of here.
In 1996 I spent 6 weeks just outside Sydney Australia… A place called Manly. They have a pedestrian concourse called The Corso there. There is a tree perhaps 55 feet tall and almost that canopy wide. At night the flying fox bats would roost in the tree. It is a fig of some sort as I saw the bats eating the fruit. I didn’t realize how big a family figs cover.
Or perhaps they used the name but it isn’t related.
Let’s see if this posts. You can use google map to get a street level view.
It is critically endangered in it’s native Brazil. The tree grows up to 130 feet tall and has soccer ball size cones that a full of large edible nuts that taste like chestnut.
The Petrified Forest is made up of this or a closely related species. The tree isn’t a true pine, having evolved long before pines existed. The needles and thick, stiff, and pocky to deter browsing by sauropods–that’s how old these things are.
Mine have survived one winter here and should be fully hardy. It’s a bit slow growing but not too bad. Root rot seems the main concern here in eastern NC. There is a related species from Chile called the Monkey Puzzle tree that’s more hardy but not heat tolerant. It does very well in the PNW and the UK. The two do hybridize to form a heat and cold tolerance cross but getting those hybrids is almost impossible in the US. There’s also an Australian species, the Bunya Bunya, that is even bigger that is hardy to zone 9. Numerous other species can be grown in the tropics and are popular ornamentals due to their beautiful form.
Apperantly this is a relative to the Norfolk Island Pine, a very popular ornamental in South Florida. Norfolk Pines are so common, I didn’t know they were naturally endemic to a tiny Pacific Island and thought they were from Norfolk, Virginia. We used to have one when I was growing up, its top was missing because of a tornado for years until it got hit by lightning and died. Made a mess when it fell, they are massive trees.
Not cold tolerent, but people grow it as inhouse ornamentals (which is absolutely baffling to me since the ones I’ve seen can be 50+ feet).
Yes. Though a lot of “Norfolk Island Pine” are actually “Cook Island Pine” another member of the same genus. If it’s very narrow, or if it’s on sale at Christmas time in a pot, it’s a Cook Island Pine.
Regardless, both are gigantic trees, easily topping 200 ft in their native environment.
There’s also a wild small persimmon, mulberries and almonds. But I’m sure the figs in the Bible were also smyrna and common figs since the Romans cultivated them well over 2,000 years ago.
Cato the Elder wrote about several figs named Mariscan, African, Herculanean, Saguntine, and Black Tellanian.
Figs saved the day once. “When Cato the Elder implored his fellow Romans to fight the Carthaginians, he showed the senators some fresh figs – supposedly from Carthage – to make them see just how close the African city was to Rome.”
It prefers well drained, slightly acidic soil but will tolerate almost any soil type provided drainage is good. It requires a subtropical/temperate climate with abundant rainfall, tolerating occasional frosts down to about −5 to −20 °C (23 to −4 °F).
From wiki
What does the frost mean, is it down to 23 or -4f pretty huge difference and put pretty oddly
Though, be advised, while smaller than some other species of Araucaria, these are still 100+ ft trees, and you’ll need a male and a female, which means planting three of them if you want good odds. I’ve also has fairly high transplant mortality even from seedlings, though that might just be my site.
