Ficus nipponica

Ficus 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.

Like 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.

A 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.

Use 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.