Strangler Fig

South Florida has its share of botanical oddities, and one of the strangest of these is the strangler fig, Ficus aurea Nutt. This plant occurs in the Bahamas, West Indies, and up into central Florida. It is a vitally important source of food for wildlife, especially birds. Often seen in swamps and sloughs, it also thrives just behind the dune line on beaches, and in general landscape conditions. Given time and space, the strangler fig becomes a magnificent tree, 50-60 feet tall, with a wide, rounded crown.

Berries and Leaves

Delnor Wiggins Pass State Park

The very name of the plant creates a little shiver, which its growth pattern does nothing to dispel. It generally starts out as an epiphyte, after a seed which has lodged in a rough spot in the bark of a tree or behind the "boot" of a cabbage palm germinates. (The "boot" is what is left after the rest of an old frond has fallen off the tree. It is actually the base of the frond, and creates a mini-habitat for all manner of flora and fauna).  After it germinates, the seed puts out  an aerial root, which  grows downward and around, vine-like, until it reaches the ground.

Strangler Fig beginning to grow on Cabbage Palm.

Cabbage Palm still thriving

Delnor Wiggins Pass State Park, 

Naples, FL

Once rooted, it starts growing back up and around the tree, gradually encircling and constricting its host. 

Strangler fig beginning to grow back up a cabbage palm

 Weaver's Station, Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, Collier County Florida

As the stems/roots grow they sport numerous new aerial roots, so the process of encirclement accelerates after a certain point. Eventually all these vining stems may come together to form a trunk. Cabbage palms typically die when their crowns are shaded out, or even collapse under the fig's weight. Hardwoods die as the circulation of water and nutrients is increasingly restricted.

Strangler Fig and dead Cabbage Palm

Delnor Wiggins Pass State Park

Naples, Florida

The battle between the strangler fig and huge cypress trees can be epic, taking decades to be won, or ending in a standoff. The strain is visible as the bark of the cypress breaks and buckles within the fig's coils. Even an apparently moribund cypress will still send out shoots and sprouts its bid to survive.

Strangler Fig and Bald Cypress

Big Cypress Boardwalk

Fakahatchee Strand

The texture of an old fig is like the proverbial moonscape, with warts, bumps, ripples and dents, and often is decorated with moss, algae and/or lichens.

Strangler Fig on Bald Cypress

Fakahatchee Strand

Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk

Back in the 1950's my young friends and I were completely unfazed by the profusion of deadly toxic oleanders in the Florida landscape. They even were planted on the grounds of our elementary school, and we played in their shade. We knew better than to mess with them, and we liked the flowers. Strangler figs were another matter altogether. Shivering in delighted horror, we shared tales of unfortunates who went to sleep in the shade of a strangler fig, only to awaken, too late! in its suffocating coils. Even as an adult who is not afraid of snakes, I still find something a little macabre, inexorable and python-like about this plant.

Strangler Fig and Spanish Moss on

Cabbage Palm

Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve

Collier County, FL