Ficus pseudopalma vs, Meryta balansae in PR

[Cindy Adair]

I see this single trunk Ficus whenever I exit my house. New leaf color is beginning to fade now.

Since PR apparently has the right wasp to pollinate my pretty little Christmas Fig (Ficus gasparriniana v. laceratifolia) I am hoping I will have volunteers of other nice Ficus like this one and F. dammaropsis?

My Meryta balansae is at the back of my house so not admired quite as often. I am delighted with them both. 

I will add photo(s) of the Meryta tomorrow and you can decide which tree is the best.

Please post yours!

[Cindy Adair]

Meryta balansae is dead center in this photo from above a part of my jungle. 

Looks like some critter has been dining on some of the leaves.

[Leekat]

On 6/13/2020 at 4:23 PM, Cindy Adair said:

I see this single trunk Ficus whenever I exit my house. New leaf color is beginning to fade now.

Since PR apparently has the right wasp to pollinate my pretty little Christmas Fig (Ficus gasparriniana v. laceratifolia) I am hoping I will have volunteers of other nice Ficus like this one and F. dammaropsis?

My Meryta balansae is at the back of my house so not admired quite as often. I am delighted with them both. 

I will add photo(s) of the Meryta tomorrow and you can decide which tree is the best.

Please post yours!

Do you have Ficus pseudopalma or Meryta balansae for sale?  Do you ship to California?

[Cindy Adair]

Sorry, neither has made seeds and I am not a nursery owner. The Ficus was a gift and I do not know the seller and the Meryta was purchased in FL.

[chinandega81]

4 hours ago, Leekat said:

Do you have Ficus pseudopalma or Meryta balansae for sale?  Do you ship to California?

I bought my Ficus pseudopalma from Richard Lyon. Mine is fruting but my understanding is they need a special wasp to do so in South Florida...so I am unsure if I have dead seeds or if they are viable. Do you know how they are supposed to look if viable? I have plenty to give away if they have in fact been pollinated...just not sure how to tell.

[Cindy Adair]

I am no help here. My Ficus trees have only been in the ground 3 years (at most) here in PR. I also see fruit on my F. pseudopalma and also on my F. dammaropsis but nothing that looks like seeds yet. 
I do have volunteer seedlings from my little Christmas ficus (never saw the seeds) so hoping the non aggressive wasps around here will get to work and pollinate everything.

[epiphyte]

yesterday i harvested red figs from my ficus gasparriniana and they had relatively large seeds in them.  my local friend has had volunteers pop up around his mother plant.  he found a research paper that says this species is.... can't remember the technical term, but it doesn't need pollination to produce seeds.  apomictic?  i need to ask him for the paper.  

dammaropsis and pseudopalma are in the same section so it might be possible to cross-pollinate them.   they are dioecious, like ficus carica.  but the figs on male trees also have female flowers.  

here's a recent pic of a fallen dammaropsis fruit...

the ostiole is on the right surrounded by white male buds (look like insect eggs) which are surrounded by a brown carpet of female flowers way past their prime.   

just like a cherimoya, the female flowers open first.  when they are done blooming, then the male flowers open.  i'm not sure why these male flowers didn't open.  

even though this fig has both male and female flowers, in its native habitat, the female flowers function as nurseries for wasp eggs.  the male wasps emerge 1st and they immediately impregnate the female wasps.  when the female wasps emerge, the male flowers open and cover the female wasps with pollen.  the female wasps fly off and if they are unlucky they find their way into a female fig.  the flowers in the female fig aren't the right length so the female wasp can't lay her eggs in them.  but in the process she pollinates the flowers and then dies.  

since we don't have the right wasps here, in theory it's possible to pollinate the female flowers in the male figs.  

for reference, here's a recent pic of a ficus auriculata fig...
 

the ostiole is on the left surrounded by male flowers, which are actually open.  they are surrounded by a brown carpet of spent female flowers.  

auriculata is in the same subgenus as dammaropsis but in a different section.  it might be possible to cross-pollinate them since it's possible to cross-pollinate pumila and carica which aren't even in the same subgenus.  

even though the auriculata male flowers are open i don't think they've released their pollen.  for male carica figs i leave them cut in half over night inside the house.  the next day i pick them up, turn them upside down, and tap on them (ie with a spoon) over a black plastic lid...
 

 

i filter out all the dead and dying male wasps and the disoriented female wasps and then put the pollen into an 18 gauge syringe with some water.   i kinda shake it around and then inject it into figs of other species.   

yesterday i tried injecting carica pollen into green gasparriniana figs but they were rock solid.  there didn't even seem to be any cavity at all.  it makes sense that it doesn't need any room for wasps.  also tried injecting carica pollen into aspera (clown fig).  the cavity was very small and very close to the ostiole.   formosana figs have a big cavity.   

i have no idea if any dioecious ficus are self-fertile.  can dammaropsis pollen be used to pollinate a receptive fig on the same tree?  all ficus seem to stagger fig production.  

ficus pollination is certainly more involved than cherimoya pollination.   but quite a few people outside of carica wasp territory have been successfully pollinating carica using this method, more or less.   so it's definitely doable.  ideally we should be using this method and similar ones to try pollinating dammaropsis, pseudopalma and other rare ficus. 

the 1st step is the easiest, cut the figs in half and share pics.  

[Cindy Adair]

Very interesting epiphyte!
 

My pseudopalma is much taller so harder to see when it fruits much less reach them on the hill. 
 

My dammaropsis fruit is easy to reach, though some branches were “pruned” by Hurricane Ernesto’s visit. 

[epiphyte]

time to air-layer the pseudopalma?  haha, jk, kinda.   look forward to seeing pics of your dammaropsis fruit.  do any of your local friends also have a dammaropsis?  

[Josh76]

I'm so interested to hear how this project develops. I love the idea of interspecific Ficus hybrids. The possibility of introducing additional hardiness to some of the large-leaf species (e.g. dammaropsis, auriculata) or the larger species with buttressed trunks (e.g. macrophylla, rubiginosa) is very exciting.

If your experiments appear to set viable seed, I'll happily volunteer to try some 😜

[Cindy Adair]

I do have fruits on both my Ficus dammaropsis and my Ficus pseudopalma.
 

However even on the easy to reach dammaropsis I have no idea how to tell when they are ripe. 
 

I can only see the fruits of the pseudopalma hidden within the leaves with binoculars. They are dark brown. 
 

Hard to see but there is a rake handle next to the trunk trying to provide scale.

Nothing for scale in the photo taken 4 years ago but probably less than 6 feet tall then. 

Really too bright mid day for these photos…

 

[epiphyte]

holy cow, your pseudopalma shot up!  how does such a lorax looking tree survive even gentle breezes?   if it was beheaded would the stem make new heads?  a few times, like with some aloes, i've chickened out beheading a plant because i wasn't sure if any new heads would pop up.

with the dammaropsis fruit it's hard to say which stage it's in.  here's a full size green dammaropsis fruit...
 

with all the male buds around the ostiole i'm guessing it's male.  instead of the brown carpet of spent female flowers seen in the fallen fruit, in this fruit the carpet is white as snow.   except is it a white carpet of female buds or flowers?  i have no idea. 

from what i've read about ficus carica pollination, people say different things about the optimal size of the female fig for pollination... such as marble size to cherry size or larger.   but the consensus seems that you shouldn't wait for the female carica fig to be full size before you pollinate it.   is this also the case for dammaropsis?  again, no idea.  

for now i think we should just be trying to sex dammaropsis trees by cutting the fruits in half and identifying the important bits.  it would be nice to see some male flowers that are actually open.  maybe here in california our warm season is too short for dammaropsis fruits to fully mature.  in this case hopefully we could still make due with auriculata pollen.  

[Tracy]

Since message_from_god  was interested in Ficus pseudoplama, this seemed like the thread to revive for an alternate but similar large long leafed plant, Meryta balansae.  Particularly in that he/she is in San Diego area, where I know that Meryta balansae grows well and might still be available (search the For Sale section, Matt in SD had some he germinated from his plants a couple of years ago).

A still potted specimen and one in ground grown here in San Diego County.   These are still quite young toddlers.

[Cindy Adair]

I loved rereading the posts and seeing the old and new photos. 

Your Meryta trees are lovely Tracy! Are they in half sun?

It was also interesting to see the photo I took of my little Meryta 5 years ago.
 

The pinnate palm near it in my 2020 photo is Welfia regia which has now grown tall with some now very large tree ferns so my Meryta is in too much shade. 
 

I recently have done some thinning out but not easy on a steep slope. 
 

I have made much better spaces available for my Meryta but have no idea if it might withstand being moved. Best would be for me to find another and choose a better location…
 

Traveling now but will try for some Meryta update photos upon my return. 

[Peter]

Here's one of my Merytas-it's maybe 12' tall now-it's been in the ground well over 15 years

[Tracy]

43 minutes ago, Peter said:

Here's one of my Merytas-it's maybe 12' tall now-it's been in the ground well over 15 years

It appears that yours waited a long time to branch.  The one fuller specimen I have branched relatively low, but I have another in the ground in heavy shade, which is much slower and remains a single trunk.  The potted one posted above is just a single trunk too.  Dorian (Dean's son) has one that is about 8' of single trunk and then appears to have branched above that.  I got mine from Matt and I think the one in his front yard is branched relatively low, but I don't recall the one in the backyard, or which of his the is the male and female.  It is interesting to see a little variation in the growth.  Do you have both male and female plants enabling you to reproduce like Matt and Len have done?  The answer is probably in some older posts, but I'm still interested.

Cindy, the answer is the one in the pot receives bright but sometimes filtered am and heavy afternoon shade.  The in ground one in the photo that has branched, is in mid-day sun but gets early am shade from my house and the wall in front of it blocks the afternoon sun for now.  It will eventually be above the wall for late afternoon exposure.  I'm in the coastal marine layer zone, so not nearly as intense of sun as other spots.  Dorian's much older specimen is on the north side of the property here in Leucadia and under some large canopy trees, so my best description is shade with dappled light for his.  His specimen was a prime motivator to get this along with Len's and Matt's (Matt in SD).

[Billeb]

Both mine have absolutely exploded. These two plants were procured from @Matt in SD at the same batch as @Tracy. First picture is June 2023 showing the backyard one in the ground and the front yard one still in its tiny pot. It was planted out 2 days later. 
 

(2nd/3rd pic) Backyard plant has grown almost above the 10ft patio cover and is bending toward the sun. I attempted to stake it but then said oh well and let it do its thing. It split about 6 months ago and is splitting again now. 
 

(4th pic) Front yard plant is nearly as tall but not as full looking. It has not split at all. 
 

The only explanation for the explosive growth I can think of is I constant feed Fertigate via Dosatron. No other difference between these snd other plants in the garden. 
 

-dale 

[happypalms]

2 hours ago, Billeb said:

Both mine have absolutely exploded. These two plants were procured from @Matt in SD at the same batch as @Tracy. First picture is June 2023 showing the backyard one in the ground and the front yard one still in its tiny pot. It was planted out 2 days later. 
 

(2nd/3rd pic) Backyard plant has grown almost above the 10ft patio cover and is bending toward the sun. I attempted to stake it but then said oh well and let it do its thing. It split about 6 months ago and is splitting again now. 
 

(4th pic) Front yard plant is nearly as tall but not as full looking. It has not split at all. 
 

The only explanation for the explosive growth I can think of is I constant feed Fertigate via Dosatron. No other difference between these snd other plants in the garden. 
 

-dale 

I have two one in a nice spot the other in a dry place and the one that’s dry seems to do just fine. They are a fantastic last for that tropical look! You’re ones look like they are loving life.