Apple Tree??

over 3 years ago

Hey everyone, this is an Apple Tree (yes really) but it is not (YES REALLY) if ever there was an oxymoron here it is, do you agree??? Before we get to that check out a post I did on the species of this tree a month ago here: https://hive.blog/tourism/@craigcryptoking/wonderboom-wonder-tree

So is it an Apple Tree? Technically not this is a Wild FIG:Distribution and habitat
Ficus craterostoma grows in moist, evergreen forest, riverine and swamp forest, coastal forest and in deep, heavily wooded mountain ravines, always in high rainfall areas. In South Africa it occurs from the Great Kei River in the Eastern Cape northwards through KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga to Limpopo. It also occurs in Swaziland, western Mozambique, eastern Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, DRC, Angola, westwards to Sierra Leone and eastwards to Uganda and Tanzania.

Derivation of name and historical aspects
The name Ficus is the Latin name for ‘fig’, possibly derived from the Persian fica, or Hebrew fag. The species name craterostoma, means ‘bowl-shaped mouth’ from the Latin crater, ‘a bowl’ and the Greek stoma, meaning ‘mouth’ and refers to the shape of the opening, or mouth, of the figs.

The genus Ficus is one of 37 genera in the Moraceae, a family whose members all have milky sap, leaves that are simple or lobed (never pinnate) and a stipule that covers the growing tip. There are about 750 species in the genus Ficus, most of them, about 500 species, occur in Asia and Australia, 150 species occur in the Americas and 110 species in Africa and Madagascar. There are 48 species in southern Africa (Burrows 2003). Credits and More here as per pza.sanbi http://pza.sanbi.org/ficus-craterostoma#:~:text=Ficus%20craterostoma%20is%20a%20small,smooth%20with%20fine%20longitudinal%20cracks.&text=burkei%20(common%20wild%20fig)%2C,larger%20and%20are%20usually%20hairy.

I actually have a wild obsession with Tree's they are aside from the humble honey bee amongst my favourite natural phenomenon and the shape of this particular one so well groomed, of the best I have seen don't you agree?