Among the more than 800 fig species, the Ficus benjamina has emerged as a decorative and easy-care foliage plant. Hobby gardeners are longingly on the lookout for the orange drupes. Read here when your birch fig bears fruit and what the fruit is all about.
The Ficus Benjamini blooms extremely rarely as a houseplant
Spherical flowers look like fruits
Under ideal conditions with perfect care at the optimal location, a Ficus benjamina can be persuaded to flower. As a rule, the tropical green plant takes between 5 and 10 years to please us with its first flowering period. These characteristics characterize a Benjamini flower:
- Flowering time is between August and November
- Spherical inflorescences develop in the leaf axils
- One inflorescence is glossy green with a diameter of 1.5 cm
- Male and female flowers grow separately
What looks like fruit at first glance is actually a flower on a Benjamini. This can be a male flower with pollen, a finished flower, or a sterile female flower. The male flowers can be recognized by free sepals and a stamen on a short stalk. Female flowers are sessile with sepals and a round ovary.
No fruit without natural pollinators
The birch fig bears fruit in its tropical and subtropical habitats because special pollinating insects are native there. These know how to get into the tiny opening of a female, fertile flower in order to transfer the pollen there. Since there are no pollinators in Central Europe to visit a birch fig on the balcony, you will look in vain for the orange drupes.
Manual pollination, as is possible with other indoor plants, has no chance of success on a Ficus benjamina. In the absence of ripe fruits with germinable seeds, the propagation of a birch fig is limited to the cuttings method.
tips
If you come across a fruit-bearing birch fig on holiday, you should refrain from snacking on the small, ripe stone fruit. In contrast to the common fig (Ficus carica), the slightly toxic ingredients in a birch fig (Ficus benjamina) will give you an unpleasant stomach ache.