the demand for ficus diversity

[Epiphyte]

so far in my life i've only attended one bonsai society meeting. it was a while ago and i brought one of my phorobanas. there was some interest, but i could tell it was mostly polite. before and after the meeting the members formed small groups to chat and catch up. imagine if i had stood close enough to one of these groups so that i could eavesdrop on their discussion, which turned out to be about putting mandarins, grapes, raisins, and cranberries into salads, not fruit salads but lettuce salads. personally, i am deeply offended by the thought of anybody putting sweet fruit (as opposed to tomatoes and avocados) into lettuce salads. in this case what would be the right thing to do? obviously the right thing to do would be to call the president of the club over to stop the discussion.

in reality, asking the president to stop a conversation between grown adults would be the really wrong thing to do. and it would be even more wrong if the president actually did it. the right thing for me to do would be to simply step a few feet away so that i stopped hearing the offensive conversation.

personally i've attended countless plant society meetings and not once has the leader ever been asked to stop a conversation between grown adults. yet on plant forums it's a completely different story. "hey mod, this topic is offensive. please lock it, better yet delete." "ok, i'll do that right away, because i really don't want anyone to be offended."

a long time ago socrates was put on trial for filling young people's heads with offensive ideas. there were a few hundred jurors, the majority of which voted for him to be killed. ain't democracy great? you can get what you want for free. in a market, on the other hand, if you want somebody dead you either have to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it.

not too long ago i was permanently banned from the dendroboard for "trolling". everything i wrote about the benefits of hybridization was 100% sincere and backed by science. but it offended the majority of the members so i was voted off the island. they got rid of me for free.

fact is, nobody is truly better off when group decisions are made by democracy or dictators. all group decisions should be made by donations. this is something i've said before, and i'll say it again. if this offends you then please don't do the wrong thing. do the right thing and just step away from my threads. if, on the other hand, anyone wants to civilly disagree and discuss then they are more than welcome to.

 

[Epiphyte]

around 4 years ago at a local nursery here in southern california i noticed a different looking ficus. when i looked at the label it said that it was a cross between carica and pumila. this blew my mind. superficially the two species are completely different. carica is a tree from the mediterranean while pumila is a vine from china, japan and vietnam. i would have never guessed that they were closely related enough to cross. since i didn't think that artificial pollination of ficus was even possible, i simply assumed for a long time that this surprising hybrid was the random result of a carica wasp being really confused or tricked. eventually i learned that it was a deliberate cross made more than half a century ago by the prominent carica researcher ira condit.

so far i've personally seen 3 different siblings...

the 1st is the one i saw at a nursery, the 2nd was at a local botanic garden and the 3rd is mine, which i recently put into a 7 gallon pot. it's really enjoyable to see the continuum of forms in between carica and pumila. mine is kinda in the middle. i regret not buying the one i saw at the nursery because i haven't seen it again. i had assumed it was mass produced and i was going to find it somewhere else for cheaper, but nope.

even though carica and pumila look very different, they are both dioecious. this means that some plants are male while others are female. the opposite of this is monoecious. out of the around 1000 species of ficus around half are dioecious and the other half are monoecious.

unfortunately, nearly all the commonly grown ornamental ficus, such as benjamina and elastica, are monoecious, so they probably can't be crossed with carica. maybe there are a couple exceptions?

last year my carica pumila cross produced one fig...

which i'm guessing is male...

for reference, here is a male carica fig with wasps...

and here is a ficus pumila fig, which i'm pretty sure is female...

evidently the carica wasps, which are established here in southern california, show absolutely no interest in female pumila figs. and unfortunately we don't have pumila wasps here. when pumila is pollinated in its native habit the cavity gets filled with delicious looking flesh. not sure exactly how it tastes.

recently i tried grafting some mature scions of female pumila onto carica and no surprise they took...

when the pumila scions fruit i'll try pollinating with pollen from carica and other closely related species.

the pollination process involves opening male figs, tapping out the pollen, putting it into some water, and using a syringe to inject it into female figs. there's a decent amount of information available online if you google artificial fig pollination or manual fig pollination.

virtually all the information regarding artificial fig pollination has to do with pollinating "common" figs in order to make them taste better. as far as i know, only 3 or 4 ficus crosses have been made, all with carica, and all by researchers. here the list of species...

ficus auriculata
ficus erecta
ficus pumila
ficus sarmentosa

a picture of the sarmentosa carica cross was shared in a facebook group but i wasn't able to track down any additional information. it wouldn't be surprising though if it's compatible with carica because sarmentosa is in the same subgenus (synoecia) and section (rhizocladus) as pumila.

 

[Epiphyte]

for the past year or so i've been attempting to graft different dioecious ficus species onto carica in order to test for compatibility. if a species grows well when grafted onto carica, then it's more likely that they can be crossed. this isn't a perfect rule. for example, despite several attempts i haven't managed to successfully graft auriculata onto carica, even though they've been crossed. auriculata is in the sycomorus subgenus, which might be the most distant from the carica subgenus (ficus) among all the dioecious species. hard to say. it remains to be seen if the opposite situation of auriculata exists... a species that's graft, but not cross, compatible with carica.

subgenus ficus

ficus erecta seems to grow pretty well grafted onto carica. guessing that this erecta is female...

ficus vaccinioides...

hard to graft because the stems are so thin. it would be fun to see this grafted onto a large carica trunk, so it would resemble a lorax tree.

pic from last summer of ficus tannoensis, gasparriniana, cf heterophylla, and formosana on carica. closer pic...

recent pic of the same tree...

figs on ficus formosana, closer pic...

when they start ripening, which should be any day now, i will open one up to see if it's male or female. if it's female then i'll try pollinating it with male carica. if the formosana is male then i'll be looking for some female caricas.

ficus tannoensis that i propagated from a cutting. i brought it to the la arboretum to donate, on the same day as a bonsai show, which is where i took this pic.

here's cf heterophylla grafted onto a different carica...

close up...

got it in a trade as cf heterophylla but i don't think it looks very much like heterophylla.

subgenus sycidium

ficus opposita with male figs...

pic from last year of opposita grafted onto carica ...

recent pic of opposita that i grafted onto my neighbor's big carica last year...

a couple times i removed the grafting tape after what i thought was adequate time, but shortly afterwards i'd notice partial separation of the graft union. so i'm guessing opposita isn't as compatible as formosana and the other species in the ficus subgenus ficus.

subgenus sycomorus

ficus auriculata loaded with fruit...

variety with reddish new leaves...

mine after being potted up...

grafted onto carica...

it failed shortly after this picture.

so far ficus (sycomorus) cocculifolia has been a champ grafted onto carica...

my regular ficus sycomorus on its own roots...

last year i had a scion growing very well on carica, but then the carica randomly died. might have been too much water and/or inadequate drainage.

since cocculifolia seems to grow so well on carica, unlike auriculata, while opposita is kinda iffy, it's hard to say whether subgenus sycomorus is closer to carica than subgenus sycidium. it's a really big fascinating ficus puzzle.

not sure if you can tell, but when i graft a different species onto carica, initially i'll regularly remove any new growth from the carica. in theory this forces the carica to direct all its energy into the scion. of course this isn't practical to do with big trees.

i'm guessing that this post will cause some of you to suffer from information overload? hey, this isn't facebook.

i really want to know how robots in the future will share information with each other. if robots always exchange all their information when they meet another robot, then they will have to lug around exponentially more external hard drives. or they will have to pay for a lot of cloud storage space. it makes sense that they will have to prioritize.

in my 1st thread here, @Gabler said that we just happen to disagree. if we were robots, then what? he'd wirelessly transfer all the relevant data to me? or he'd grant me temporary access to the relevant data? then i'd do the same for him? if we had access to all the same relevant data then this would eliminate our disagreement, right? in my case that's a lot of data... books, articles, papers, studies, lectures and so on. not sure how long it would take his robot brain to process it all.

if we could donate to prioritize categories, and their creation, naturally i'd donate for the creation of a category for ficus. this priority would reflect a lot of data. the information shared in this post is just a tiny fraction of all the information i have about the incredible and immense hybridization potential for ficus that's been virtually untapped. each new hybrid will be a completely new form, that might be more rewarding to bonsai than all the other ficus you've ever worked with before. each new hybrid will also produce a completely new fruit, that might be tastier than all the other figs you've ever tried before.

would gabler donate? if so, which category would he donate for? his priority would also reflect a lot of data, virtually all of which would be different than mine, which is why two heads are better than one. naturally more heads are even better.

if every member chipped in to prioritize the categories then the result would reflect an incredible amount of data. none of us would have access to the entire mountain of data, but it would still influence and improve our own priorities. this in turn would improve the data we collect, so it would be an immensely virtuous cycle of progress and improved priorities.

not too long ago one of my biggest plant priorities was the orchid family...

One would think that man could find enough variation in the orchid family, as it occurs in nature, to more than satiate his taste for variety. Yet man's appetite for variety is never appeased. He has produced over two times as many hybrids, in the past 100 years that he has been engaged in orchid breeding, as nature has created species in her eons of evolutionary effort. - Calaway H. Dodson, Robert J. Gillespie, The Botany of Orchids

was i barking up the wrong tree?

imagine a group where everybody is barking up the wrong tree, except for one person. and then they kick that person from the group. that really wouldn't be a happy ending. a happy ending would be if everybody else in that group quickly started barking up the right tree. if ficus is the right tree, obviously i should have the opportunity to share a ton of information about it. voila, here i am. it's a great opportunity. but it would be even more useful to have the opportunity to spend some money for a category for ficus. it's the best possible tl;dr.

if gabler spends $40 for a cyrtocarpa category, even if he doesn't post any explanation, it will still jump on my radar. i regularly get emails about new listings from seed sellers. if i happen to see cyrtocarpa seeds for sale, and they aren't too crazily priced, then i'll buy them. i'll sow the seeds, and when i eventually taste the fruit, perhaps i'll also chip in for a cyrtocarpa category. this is the easiest and most efficient way for the right trees to quickly jump on all our radars.

 

[Shibui]

Some really interesting info in all that. It will take some time to digest....

even though carica and pumila look very different, they are both dioecious. this means that some plants are male while others are female. the opposite of this is monoecious. out of the around 1000 species of ficus around half are dioecious and the other half are monoecious.

If Ficus carica is dioecious how is it that every tree here produces fruit? When I search online (not always accurate info!) I find Ficus carica listed as gynodioecious, - a new term for me but seems to mean some trees are hermaphrodite and have male and female parts in the same flower (or in this case, fruit)
It would obviously make sense for gardeners to select figs that were self fertile to save space in the garden. I'll have to check some of the many seedlings that germinate in my garden to see if I can spot the signs of male v female fruits on any of the seedlings.

 

[Gabler]

Why graft, when ficus roots so easily from cuttings?

 

[Epiphyte]

@Shibui yeah carica gender is definitely more nuanced than i let on in my post. if you go to a chain type nursery or big garden center and find a carica tree for sale, chances are really good that it will be a "common" female variety. this means that the fruit will ripen, and be delicious, without any need for pollination. there will be seeds but they won't be viable. if they are viable, it's because a carica wasp was responsible. in theory, pollination will make a "common" fig taste even better. this is the main motivation for carica hobbyists to inject their female caricas with carica pollen.

if you have fig seedlings that randomly pop up in your garden then chances are good you live in an area where the carica wasp has been introduced. i know the carica wasp is in australia but not exactly sure of its distribution. since carica seedlings volunteer in your area this is pretty solid evidence that carica wasps are responsible. there's a very small chance that someone in your neighborhood is a carica hobbyist and they are manually pollinating female caricas figs, and some of those fruits are being eaten by critters who poop the seeds out everywhere.

outside of chain type nurseries and big garden centers, you can find "caducous" female caricas for sale. these produce figs that will ripen and be delicious only if they are pollinated. so if someone doesn't have the fig wasp in their area, and they don't manually pollinate these figs, they will simply fall off.

to make things even more complicated, there are even some male figs that are edible, just google for "edible caprifig".

ficus opposita is native to australia, but your area might be too cold for it?

 

[RoadManDenDron]

I have very little/ no interest in ficus,

Yet this post was brought to attention by the recent posts page

Honestly fascinating information, I will re read several times to see what I can understand

Nice pics thank you for sharing

No donation needed what a wonderful tool master nut has created where we can all share our passion free of charge

And now, again free of charge I have chosen to engage in your post which will bring it back to the top and bump it to others who may enjoy.

 

[Epiphyte]

Why graft, when ficus roots so easily from cuttings?

unfortunately there are numerous exceptions to this rule. ficus afghanistanica, for example, is very closely related to carica, and they look very similar, but for some reason afghanistanica is very difficult to grow from cuttings. if it did grow easy from cuttings i'm sure it would be a lot more commonly grown. naturally, most of the commonly grown ficus do grow easy from cuttings.

fortunately ficus graft really easy, if they are compatible. grafting allows me to quickly test for compatibility, which is the main factor when it comes to hybridization.

 

[Epiphyte]

@RoadManDenDron don't get me wrong, information should be freely available and freely shared. but it's a basic fact that some topics are more useful to members than others. just how useful is the topic of grafting? how useful is the topic of hybridization?

last night i was trying to make room for a bunch of free caricas that a friend gave me to plant in a public food forest i'm starting. in the process of making room, even though i was wearing gloves, i managed to get cactus spines in my thumb. i walked over to the porch light, reached into one of my many pockets and pulled out my trusty tweezers that i even made a holster for. sadly my trusty tweezers were not up to the job. the spines were way too fine. but i always keep the tweezers in my pocket because they are good for plenty of other jobs.

when you're in the garden, do you carry any tools around with you? clippers? are they in a holster on your belt? do you wear one of those utility bonsai "aprons"? we all use lots of tools in the garden, and obviously we can't carry them all around with us. so we have to prioritize what we have on us at all times, based on practicality and usefulness.

forum topics like tools aren't equally useful. ideally we should carry the most useful topics around with us. the most useful tool for determining the usefulness of forum topics is donations.

 

[nuttiest]

When you get to 10000 posts we will call you tweezer holster.

 

[rockm]

@RoadManDenDron don't get me wrong, information should be freely available and freely shared. but it's a basic fact that some topics are more useful to members than others. just how useful is the topic of grafting? how useful is the topic of hybridization?

last night i was trying to make room for a bunch of free caricas that a friend gave me to plant in a public food forest i'm starting. in the process of making room, even though i was wearing gloves, i managed to get cactus spines in my thumb. i walked over to the porch light, reached into one of my many pockets and pulled out my trusty tweezers that i even made a holster for. sadly my trusty tweezers were not up to the job. the spines were way too fine. but i always keep the tweezers in my pocket because they are good for plenty of other jobs.

when you're in the garden, do you carry any tools around with you? clippers? are they in a holster on your belt? do you wear one of those utility bonsai "aprons"? we all use lots of tools in the garden, and obviously we can't carry them all around with us. so we have to prioritize what we have on us at all times, based on practicality and usefulness.

forum topics like tools aren't equally useful. ideally we should carry the most useful topics around with us. the most useful tool for determining the usefulness of forum topics is donations.

Anyone who's grown up around cactus knows the best way to get those extremely fine spines out is to use masking/Scotch/duct tape on the reverse--stick it to the area with the spines, rub it down hard, slowly pull it off and it pulls the spines up with it. Band Aides can work, but they're mostly too small and not sticky enough. Plumbers putty will also work...just sayin...

 

[Gabler]

Anyone who's grown up around cactus knows the best way to get those extremely fine spines out is to use masking/Scotch/duct tape on the reverse--stick it to the area with the spines, rub it down hard, slowly pull it off and it pulls the spines up with it. Band Aides can work, but they're mostly too small and not sticky enough. Plumbers putty will also work...just sayin...

I will carry that information with me in my mental holster.

 

[Epiphyte]

When you get to 10000 posts we will call you tweezer holster.

by then my nickname would be determined by... wait for it... donations.

 

[Epiphyte]

@rockm when i was a kid my 1st plant priority was cactus, but i pretty quickly got fed up with the spines. where were you then? my next plant priority was bonsais, but i didn't have the knowledge (or the patience?). where were you then? after that was orchids. my 1st job in high school was repotting orchids in a private greenhouse owned by a doctor. i asked him if any of the orchids could grow on trees outside. he didn't know, but he gave me a big trash bag filled with cattleya backbulbs and a couple other orchids including an oncidium. i attached them to a tree but they didn't make it, except for the oncidium. that very tiny success kept me motivated. eventually i learned after considerably trial and error that orchids here in socal need to be very tightly attached to trees or they won't establish. around a decade later i read an old article in an orchid society magazine about a guy by the name of bill paylen who had orchids, bromeliads, and staghorn ferns growing all over his trees on the other side of town from me when i was a clueless but motivated orchid kid. where was bill paylen then? on the other side of town.

maybe at this very moment on the other side of town is a clueless but motivated ficus kid. where am i now? right here. not sure how he could be clueless though, all he has to do is google the right keywords and he'd find this thread. sheesh. what a big difference a few decades make.

most likely the clueless ficus kid is actually a clueless tiktok kid, obviously because of tiktok. i don't know how anyone could look at anything popular on tiktok and think that democracy is useful. there are countless kids who should be geeking out on cactus, bonsais, orchids, ficus, and... it's a really long list. instead they are filling their minds with useless garbage. what a massive waste.

the solution is within our reach. we use donations to prioritize categories and then voila! no more tiktok. kids will geek out on the most useful things, and the world will be an infinitely better place.

 

[nuttiest]

the solution is within our reach. we use donations to prioritize categories and then voila

where r u going with this... what donations ?

 

[Shibui]

ficus opposita is native to australia, but your area might be too cold for it?

Only 2 ficus I know that will survive outdoors here - F. carica and F. pumila. Some others survive in the igloo (unheated greenhouse) but even that's a bit cool for many others so I don't grow those. There are many species I don't know so maybe there are other cold tolerant figs.

 

[Paradox]

where r u going with this... what donations ?

If you read his first thread, he thinks that the forum categories should be decided by who donates the most money to the forum for them.

He wants a ficus forum all to itself. Having it in tropicals isn't enough for him I guess. Meanwhile the rest of us think grouping ficus with tropicals is just fine

Maybe he should start a ficus only forum of his own.

If the guy really wants to donate to support the forum, the option is already there, but that's not good enough unless he can strong arm that a ficus category be at the top of the page.

 

[Gabler]

the solution is within our reach. we use donations to prioritize categories and then voila! no more tiktok. kids will geek out on the most useful things, and the world will be an infinitely better place.

That solution already exists. It's called the stock market. The company that owns TikTok is winning the race.

 

[amcoffeegirl]

Jerry Meislik has a Ficus forum on FB that is pretty great- unless you’ve already been banned.
Jerry don’t play with people trolling in his group.

 

[Epiphyte]

@Paradox

x = the supply of categories
y = the demand for categories

there should be a disparity between x and y? this disparity benefits who, exactly?

think about your local nursery

x = the supply of plants
y = the demand for plants

there should be a disparity between x and y? who would this benefit?

think about netflix

x = the supply of shows/movies/documentaries
y = the demand for content

there should be a disparity between x and y? who benefits?

the competition?

hulu says, "haha netflix, keep up the good work of greatly underestimating the demand for bonsai content. we have a ton of bonsai content and we're rolling in the cash because of it."

do hulu and netflix even have any bonsai content? youtube sure has a ton of it. this means that the demand for it must be huge, right? so why aren't netflix and hulu capitalizing on it? actually, just because youtube has a huge supply of bonsai content really doesn't mean that the demand is also huge.

here on this forum right now the pines category has 3.8k threads and 73k messages. you're welcome to guess that the demand for this category is relatively large. but if you were good at guessing demand then you'd be really rich. maybe you are really rich, but most people are not, because correctly guessing demand really isn't easy.

here are a couple basic facts...

1. demand matters, whether we're talking about bonsais, bonsai documentaries or bonsai categories
2. having to guess the demand for anything bonsai related is dumb

there's absolutely no need or benefit to try and guess the demand for forum categories. whenever anyone donates, they should be given the option to indicate which category it's for. then we'd all see and know the demand for forum categories. being correctly informed about the demand for categories would greatly improve the supply of threads, which would benefit everyone.