{"title":"Ficus (Figs)","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fig never appears to flower, and that is the whole trick of the genus. The flowers are there, hundreds of them, turned inward and lining the hollow interior of what everyone calls the fruit. In the wild figs, pollination runs through a tiny wasp that enters by a pore at the tip, a partnership so exact that most fig species carry a wasp of their own and neither partner manages without the other. The common fig grown for the table, \u003cem\u003eFicus carica\u003c\/em\u003e 'Celeste', sets fruit unaided and needs no wasp at all.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeyond the edible fig this is a genus of climbers and oddities. \u003cem\u003eFicus pumila\u003c\/em\u003e, the creeping fig, presses flat against masonry and changes leaf shape entirely with maturity. \u003cem\u003eFicus vaccinioides\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eFicus nipponica\u003c\/em\u003e are small-leaved East Asian creepers that suit a container or a sheltered wall. \u003cem\u003eFicus roxburghii\u003c\/em\u003e, now more properly \u003cem\u003eFicus auriculata\u003c\/em\u003e, carries enormous leaves and bears fruit straight off the trunk. Most of these want warmth and shelter, so read the hardiness note on each plant before committing to a cold site.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"ficus-nipponicum","title":"Ficus nipponica","description":"\u003cp\u003eFicus nipponica is a handsome evergreen climbing fig from Japan and temperate East Asia, a self-clinging vine that dresses walls, masonry, and tree trunks in glossy green the year round. Where the familiar creeping fig, Ficus pumila, carries small rounded leaves, this rarer relative bears larger, more pointed foliage and a somewhat tougher constitution. Botanists now file the plant under the sprawling Ficus sarmentosa complex, as Ficus sarmentosa var. nipponica, though it remains best known to gardeners by the older name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike other climbing figs, this vine grips by tiny aerial rootlets, the holdfasts that let the plant scale brick, stone, or bark without any trellis, knitting itself into a smooth evergreen sheet. Young clinging shoots hug the surface flat and small; older, free-standing stems grow coarser and bear the small figs typical of the genus, whose flowers stay hidden inside, pollinated only by their particular fig wasps. The effect on a wall is lush and softly tropical.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA little hardier than common creeping fig, Ficus nipponica holds evergreen through the milder South, roughly zones 8 and 9, and has taken brief cold near zero degrees in sheltered spots. Give sun to part shade and ordinary, well-drained soil, and the vine climbs steadily, faster with summer water, into a durable green cover. A word of caution belongs here: the milky sap can irritate skin, and the clinging growth can work into mortar and paint, so keep the vine to sound masonry and away from wood siding.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUse Ficus nipponica to green a shaded wall, a courtyard, a retaining wall, or a tree trunk, wherever an evergreen, self-clinging cover is wanted and a rarer, larger-leaved alternative to creeping fig appeals. Vigorous once established, the vine repays a yearly trim to keep the cover neat and off gutters and windows. For a lush, low-fuss evergreen curtain in a warm garden, this uncommon Japanese fig is a quietly excellent choice.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057869820019,"sku":"FICU-NIPP-01G","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/FicusnipponicaMoongyuLee.jpg?v=1784307316"},{"product_id":"ficus-vaccinoides","title":"Ficus vaccinioides","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Latin gives away the joke before you have even seen the plant. \u003cem\u003eFicus vaccinioides\u003c\/em\u003e, the Formosan creeping fig, is a fig that has decided to impersonate a blueberry: \u003cem\u003evaccinioides\u003c\/em\u003e means resembling \u003cem\u003eVaccinium\u003c\/em\u003e, and the small, glossy, obovate leaves running close along reddish stems really could pass for an evergreen huckleberry. They are no relation at all. They are a true fig, latex and all, just one that has shrunk to a few inches tall and given up any ambition of climbing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat last part is what sets them apart from the creeping fig everyone knows. \u003cem\u003eFicus pumila\u003c\/em\u003e will swallow a wall; this one stays low and well-mannered, mounding and trailing into a dense, fine-textured evergreen carpet, rooting as it goes but never scaling anything it should not. The effect is quiet and faintly luxurious, the kind of restrained sheen that reads as intentional in a way few groundcovers manage. They are equally at home spilling from a container, softening the edge of a shaded bed, or threading over the face of a low wall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey come from the littoral thickets of southern Taiwan, and they are tougher than the delicate look suggests: notably more cold-hardy than most figs, holding evergreen through mild winters and proven at the JC Raulston Arboretum up in Zone 7, where in a sheltered spot they take hard cold by dropping their leaves and returning from the root. That toughness is, in fact, how they reached us. This is a plant that traveled, carried along by collectors who recognized something worth keeping: out of Yucca Do Nursery in Texas, on to Riverbanks Botanical Garden in Columbia, into the collections at the JC Raulston Arboretum at NC State, and at last to Aiken. The finest plants often arrive by exactly this kind of roundabout, hand-to-hand route, which is usually a sign they were worth the trip.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA choice, collectable little thing, sterile and undemanding, asking only for part shade to sun and a soil that drains. \u003cem\u003eFicus vaccinioides\u003c\/em\u003e will not shout for attention. They will simply make everything around them look considered.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhoto courtesy of the JC Raulston Arboretum\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057869852787,"sku":"FICU-VACC-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/FicusvaccinoidesJCRA_eb886c17-0f0e-438b-99e8-1486c0026aca.jpg?v=1762295259"},{"product_id":"ficus-carica-celeste","title":"Ficus carica 'Celeste'","description":"\u003cp\u003eFew fruits carry the weight of centuries quite like the common fig. Ficus carica, native to the sun-soaked hills of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, has graced gardens and tables since biblical times, and no member of the tribe is more beloved in the American South than 'Celeste', the little fig so sweet that growers have long called the tree the Sugar Fig.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis particular lineage of Ficus carica 'Celeste' comes to us through a story as rich as the fruit. The mother plant, long rooted in Many, Louisiana, was handed down through generations before making its way to east Texas. There Gail Ebner, wife of Aiken City Councilman Reggie Ebner, took cuttings from the family fig and carried them east to South Carolina. From those cherished cuttings come the plants we now offer, grown right here in Aiken soil.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Celeste' is a hardy, self-pollinating, deciduous fig that bears abundant small to medium fruit, light brown to purplish with a tightly closed eye that helps the crop resist spoilage from rain and insects. The fruit ripens in early to mid-summer and is prized for fresh eating and preserves, or simply plucked warm from the branch and eaten under the sky that ripened them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis fig thrives in USDA zones 7 to 10 and asks little beyond full sun, fertile well-drained soil, and a measure of patience. Once established, the tree shrugs off drought and heat and gives generously in return, and even the broad, deeply lobed leaves lend a touch of ancient grace to the Southern landscape.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat we offer is more than a plant. This is a living heirloom, rooted in Southern heritage, bearing fruit from a time when home and land were measured not only in acres but in stories passed down and branches well tended.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057869951091,"sku":"FICU-CARI-CELE-01G","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Ficus_carica_Celeste_leavefruit_CSmith_ccbyncnd20.jpg?v=1750342494"},{"product_id":"ficus-pumila","title":"Ficus pumila","description":"\u003cp\u003eFigvine is very unlike the common edible fig (Ficus carica). This evergreen climber wears small, fingernail-sized rounded leaves and is most often seen scaling masonry walls, where a fringe of tiny aerial rootlets grips the roughest stone and brick. Given time, the creeping fig will trace a wall in intricate green patterns or blanket the surface entirely in a flat, dense sheet, one of the finest self-clinging covers for a shaded or partly shaded wall in a warm garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant leads a curious double life. In youth the growth is fine and flat, all small heart-shaped leaves pressed close to the wall, but as the stems gain height and age the character changes: mature shoots stand out from the surface on short woody branches and carry much larger, leathery, blunt-tipped adult leaves, and only then do the small, hard, inedible figs appear. Gardeners who want the delicate juvenile look forever simply cut the old growth back before the shrubby adult stage takes hold.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to eastern Asia and long grown across the southern United States, the creeping fig has an ethnobotanical cousin worth knowing. A Taiwanese variety, Ficus pumila var. awkeotsang, bears seeds that release a natural pectin when rubbed in water, setting into the cool amber aiyu jelly beloved in the night markets of Taiwan and Singapore. The ornamental creeping fig offered here is grown for foliage rather than the table, since the figs of the plain species are not eaten, but the family likeness is a pleasant thing to carry in mind.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the creeping fig is as useful as anything grown, softening walls, chimneys, and courtyard corners, spilling from raised beds, or knitting into a fine glossy groundcover in shade. Vigor is the one caution: the clinging rootlets can mar soft mortar and the plant will travel far, so choose a surface with room to run or keep the growth clipped and stand ready with the shears. Evergreen and fast in zones 8 to 11, happy in full sun to part shade and any soil that drains, the creeping fig also takes beautifully to topiary frames and bonsai, the small leaves lending themselves to patient shaping.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhotos courtesy of Jim Robbins and David Stang.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057870049395,"sku":"FICU-PUMI-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/FicuspumilaDavidStang.jpg?v=1751289006"},{"product_id":"ficus-roxburghii","title":"Ficus roxburghii","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the forests of the Himalayan foothills and across monsoon Asia grows a fig of ancient bearing, Ficus roxburghii, known to botanists today as Ficus auriculata and to gardeners as the elephant-ear fig. This is no dainty exotic. In the tropics the plant makes a bold small tree; in the American South, where hard frost cuts back the top, the fig returns from the root each year as a heroic perennial, with a presence as memorable as a live oak draped in Spanish moss.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHere in the Deep South, where the soil runs sandy and red and winter knocks more gently, the elephant-ear fig has found a second home. Joe LeVert of Augusta, Georgia, a true Southern plantsman, first brought the plant to our attention; his thriving, root-hardy specimen, proven through many a Southern winter, became the mother of our current stock, a plant born of grit, heritage, and care.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe leaves are the glory, sometimes stretching fifteen inches or more across, round, glossy, and substantial, rising like lacquered shields to turn any bed into a living tapestry of the tropics. In the warmest gardens the fig also bears in the curious way called cauliflory, the fat, downy fruit erupting directly from the trunk and old wood rather than the twigs. Those figs are genuinely good, eaten fresh or cooked, folded into jams and curries, or sliced green into a Vietnamese salad, and the tree carries deep ethnobotanical weight across the native range, valued for food, folklore, and traditional medicine alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlant the elephant-ear fig where the roots can stretch and where water is not a stranger, in fertile, moisture-retentive soil with shelter from wind and hard frost. Give a warm, protected corner, a shaded wall or a wind-still glen, and the fig repays the kindness with almost prehistoric grandeur, the boldest foliage a Southern garden can hold short of a banana. Root-hardy to about zone 8 with a deep winter mulch, and a superb container subject that can be wheeled under cover farther north.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057870278771,"sku":"FICU-ROXB-01G","price":48.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/E15C645A-9997-4D89-A163-EEB1756C1647.jpg?v=1751288759"},{"product_id":"ficus-heterophylla","title":"Ficus heterophylla","description":"\u003cp\u003eWe are identifying this little-known fig as Ficus heterophylla thanks to Tony Avent of Plant Delights, who was most likely the source of the cuttings we originally started with. The species name means different leaves, and the plant lives up to the promise: juvenile foliage may be lobed and wandering in outline, while the mature leaves settle into dark green, pointed, slightly heart-shaped blades carried on handsome red petioles. A faint sweetness hangs about the shrub, and the long, almost vine-like branches lend the whole plant a loose, scrambling grace.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the wild Ficus heterophylla ranges widely across warm Asia, from India and Sri Lanka through southern China and Myanmar into Thailand and the islands of western Malesia, haunting moist valleys, streambanks, and the flood-margins of rivers. Like every fig, the plant belongs to the mulberry family, Moraceae, and shares that family's strange and beautiful bargain with wasps: the true flowers are hidden inside a hollow receptacle, the syconium, pollinated by a single dedicated species of fig wasp that crawls within to complete the exchange.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAcross parts of that native range the shrub is more than a curiosity. Village healers have long put the plant to use, pounding the leaves into pastes laid on aching joints or troubled ears and simmering leaves and young fruit into folk decoctions, while the small ripe figs feed birds and other wildlife. In the garden, though, the appeal is chiefly ornamental: those variable leaves, the red-stemmed new growth, and the pliant branches that beg to be trained.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGiven a shady or half-shaded wall, Ficus heterophylla would very likely make an intriguing espalier, the long branches pinned flat into a living tracery of changeable leaves. Site the plant in moist, well-drained soil with shelter from hard frost, since this is a warm-country fig happiest in the mild gardens of zones 9 to 11 or in a container that can move indoors when winter threatens. As a new and still lightly tested introduction, the shrub is offered in a spirit of shared experiment, and we will gladly welcome any customer reports on the plant's performance and merit.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057870311539,"sku":"FICU-HETE-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1987.jpg?v=1720138164"}],"url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/collections\/ficus.oembed","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}