Digital Garden

Ficus racemosa

Gular

 Scientific Name- Ficus racemosa 

Common Name- Gular 

Family – Moraceae 

Habit type – tree 

Leaves 

Leaves simple, alternate, stipules 12-18 mm long, lanceolate, linear-lanceolate, pubescent, often persistent on young shoots; petiole 10-50 mm long, slender, grooved above, becoming brown scurfy; lamina 6-15 x 3.5-6 cm, ovate, obovate, elliptic-oblong, elliptic-lanceolate, elliptic-ovate or oblong-ovate, base acute, obtuse or cuneate, apex narrowed, blunt or acute, margin entire, membranous, glabrous, blistered appearance on drying; 3-ribbed from base, 4-8 pairs, slender, pinnate, prominent beneath, reticulate. 

Bark 

bark 8-10 mm thick, surface reddish-brown or yellowish-brown smooth, coarsely flaky, fibrous; blaze creamy pink; latex milky; young shoots and twigs finely white hairy, soon glabrous; branchlets 1.5-3 mm thick, puberulous. 

Flower 

Flowers unisexual; inflorescence a syconia, on short leafless branches or warty tubercles of trunk or on larger branches, subglobose to pyriform, smooth, often lenticellata-verrucose; peduncle 3-12 mm long, stout, orifice plane or slightly sunken, closed by 5-6 apical bracts; internal bristles none; basal bracts 3, 1-2 m long, ovate-triangular, obtuse, persistent; flowers of unisexual, 4 kinds; 

Male flowers near the mouth of receptacles, in 2-3 rings, sessile, much compressed; tepals 3-4, dentate-lacerate, lobes jointed below, red, glabrous; stamens 2, exserted; filaments 1 mm, connate below; anthers oblong, parallel; 

Female flowers sessile or very shortly stalked among gall flowers; tepals 3-4, dentate-lacerate, lobes jointed below, red, glabrous, ovary superior, sessile or substipitate, red spotted; style 2-3 mm long, glabrous, simple; stigma clavate; gall flowers long stalked; ovary dark red, rough; style short. Syconium 2.5 x 2 cm, orange, pink or dark crimson; achene granulate. 

Fruit – Synchronous Orange-red to red, fleshy. 

FACTS & MEDICINAL USES 

● The leaves are used in the treatment of diarrhoea 

● The bark is astringent. It is used in the treatment of haematuria, menorrhagia, and haemoptysis. 

● The tree is cultivated to provide shade for coffee trees 

● The latex is used in the production of water-resistant paper and as plasticizer for Hevea rubber