Ficus racemosa fruits at Makutta

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Arftist / photographer By Vinayaraj - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76515802

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Dinesh ^club

. . . .These trees do not bloom in the conventional sense: instead, they have male anf female inflorescence that are tightly encas3ed in a succulent-tasting sac called the syconium, and they cannot be pollinated directly because they flower at different times on the same tree. A species of wasp unique to each fig species must carry out this task. The female adult wasp bores through the tip of the syconium, ruining her wings and eventually dying. She lives long enough, however, to deposit her eggs and transfer the pollen from another tree to the female flowers. When the wasp eggs hatch, the wingless male, trapped within the syconium and eventually dying there, impregnates the female and chomps an opening with his powerful jaws for her to escape with another load of eggs. Sustained by sucking alcoholic nectar through her long, strawlike proboscis from the deep corollas of the fig flowers, she goes on to pollinate another fig tree.

While the fig wasps carry on with their secret sex life, air flowing into the hole created by the escaping female causes the syconium to ripen into the fig “fruit” the yeast goes to work and generate the alcoholic fragrances that alert animals to the potential feast. As many as one hundred thousand figs on a large tree can be devoured by birds, bats, monkeys, pigs, and even dragonflies and geckos in a feeding frenzy. ~ Page 3

2 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

2 years ago.

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Ficus racemosa fruits at Makutta

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