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Strangler figs and cauliflory

Anna:

I bumped into my first strangler fig while in the Australian rainforest, and I was blown away by the intricate network of roots that made up the tree's trunk.  I learned that a strangler fig begins its life when a bird eats a fig fruit and deposits the seeds high in a canopy tree of another species.  The baby fig first sends up leaves of its own, then drops roots down along the trunk of the host tree until they reach the forest soil.

Then begins the struggle.  Usually, a young tree would have to wait patiently in the shadow of a canopy tree until the mammoth fell to give the youngster a little light and space to grow.  But the strangler fig has cheated and begun at the top, so it is able to overshadow the canopy of the host tree and girdle the host's roots within about a century.  By that point, the strangler is strong enough to stand on its own, so the rotting host tree simply provides a tasty meal of stump dirt for the strangler's roots.  Walking through a tropical forest, you will often come across hollow strangler figs like the tree Maggie was playing inside in a previous post.

There are several species of strangler figs found in the world's tropics and subtropics, and Monteverde has different dominant fig species in each habitat type.  The Florida Strangler Fig (Ficus tuerckheimii) is the common species around the elevation of Monteverde itself, and is the one I drew most often.

While Costa Rica's strangler figs bear their fruits on twigs like most trees do, strangler figs will always be linked to cauliflory and ramiflory in my mind.  Take a look at how the Australian strangler figs attach their fruits directly to the side of the tree trunk:

In case you can't read my miniscule writing, here is a quick description of this odd growth habit:

Later, I came across a few alternative explanations of ramiflory and cauliflory.  Since the fruits --- like this cauliflorous Zygia I found in Costa Rica --- are always large, some scientists suspect the adaptation came about to prevent twigs from breaking under the fruits' weight.  Others posit that cauliflory may have evolved to allow terrestrial animals access to the fruits for surer dispersal.  Whatever the cause, ramiflory and cauliflory always make me smile at the odd fruits sprouting out of the trunks of trees.


Maggie:

3-12-01
I love this particular Quaker church and community. The singing is powerfully spiritual, the silence is useful for contemplation. The messages and stories that are told after silence are amazing. The one that is stuck with me presently is about how it is more enjoyable to give than to receive. This wasn't exactly speech with the intent of motivating us to give. It was lightly the fact that often it is kind of hard for the receivers. The vision that went with this message was of givers and receivers with joined hands, one up, one down, all in an active chain.