810-Lancaster Firming, Saturday, July 19,1986 Figs Are Stranglers Among Trees WASHINGTON Among trees, they have a reputation as “the stranglers.” They not only strangle other trees, but will engulf almost anything that is stationary, from sidewalks and buildings to abandoned washing machines, says botantist Francis E. Putz, who has studied strangler fig trees in Venezuela, Costa Rica, and A palm tree is almost engulfed by a strangler fig on a Venezuelan savanna. The fig tree begins life at the top of the palm, grows down along its trunk, and then back up. Fig seeds are deposited by birds or bats in the crevices of palm trees. Palms can survive. Many other trees die of strangulation. SB BLACK PINK Yeuow BLUE BROWN 6IANTAHTEATER: 7Mf AMM/tL FBBDSMOSTtyO/V AMTS MD TERM/TEi.IF SOMETIMES QROU/S 1b 7 FEETLOME AHP WEIGHTS LBS. /THUS LOl/6 BRIT TLE «, TEE EIAHTAHT EATERS HOSE/SR FOOT L ONE. ITS MOUTH IS ABOUT the size ofthebluht ENPOFALEAPPEHCIL. it CHTCHES AHT6 OHnSLoHE SpCRi TOM3UE. Florida. Some varieties have swallowed up some of the remains of ancient architectural wonders, from Angkor in Kampuchea (Cambodia) to Tikal in Guatemala. Strangler figs are backward trees, Putz says. They start life in the tops of other trees and grow down, along their trunks. When they take root in the ground, they PEACH GREEN IT. BROWN LT. BLUE LT. GREEN grow backup, until they finally look and act more like normal trees. These remarkable trees lead two lives - in the treetops as desertlike plants, and rooted in the ground, with the characteristics of tropical rain-forest trees. They change not only their habitat but part of their anatomy to survive. “They are really peculiar plants,” says Putz. Strangler figs are related to East Indian banyans and grow in tropical and subtropical regions. Flowering all the time, they are a constant source of survival food for some tropical forest animals. These trees kill other trees not by choking or squeezing them, but by preventing their trunks from enlarging. Many trees, among them some of the stranglers’ favorite hosts, must add vital girth as they grow. The stranglers send down a tangle of twisted roots along the trunk, crisscrossing and fusing them so that some older stranglers appear as if they had developed a solid trunk. The other tree inside eventually dies, leaving a healthy, free-standing fig with a hollow trunk. Trees like the palm, another popular host whose trunk does not expand as it grows, can survive life with a strangler, Putz says. Strangler figs sprout from seeds deposited in the crotches and crevices of large branches by birds, bats, monkeys, and other animals that perch in treetops. The advantages of starting out at the top, Putz expalins, are an abundance of sunlight, lack of intense competition encountered by young plants on the ground, and the unlikelihood of being broken or buried by falling branches. An assistant professor of botany at the University of Florida, Putz must spend a great deal of his V^Os\ /> /' A \ l» A <•-?(&&/*• BisNO Colors 0 Leading Two Lives \pnq aAO|ftxoj f loobpt n~ ' * N V- yL» (o increased need for water, rather than for nutritive material. During life in the air, strangler figs develop thick leaves that store water, with fewer pores to reduce evaporation. “They are more succulent. They contain 10 to 20 percent more water, an adaptation to water shortage conditions that is characteristic of desertlike plants,” Putz says. Once rooted in the ground, the strangler fig “changes its leaf anatomy. Pores are more abun dant, for example,” he explains. “It is quite a different plant, more like a tropical rain-forest tree.” Given the advantages of life as a strangler fig, Putz says he wonders “why every tree in the forest is not in the process of being strangled.” [ > rtAin i Y Ron Litib^r i‘ \ si*m«uy 7- *-'B6