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
\<l
field-research time up a tree. An
experienced tree climber, he says,
“I hang there quite comfortably.
The wind’s blowing. The bugs don’t
bother you up there. It’s really
pleasant. Sometimes I’ve spent
half a day up there.”
But the top of a palm, Putz
reports, is “a wild place. There are
all sorts of insects, scorpions,
centipedes... also mice and boas. I
reach in with trepidation.”
Treetop Soil Richer
Putz found that “soil” in the
treetop - created from the nests
and feces of animals that roost
there - is two to five times richer in
nutrients than the soil on the
ground. He concludes that
strangler figs that begin life up in a
palm send roots down to the
ground primarily because of an
Would you like to be a magician? Then match the
names of the animals in the list below with the words in
the list on the hat When you’re done you will have
changed animals into plants!
1. pussy
2. toad
3. fox
4. buck
5. horse
6. tiger
7. lark
8. dog
9. chick
10. cat
11. adder’s
12. bull
apsnfl ]|nq ?\ anfiuoj s nppp jj dime -1 oi i,
iSpi ia6u q qsfpcjtsaoq g ieaqri>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