Description:

• Trees, shrubs, climbers, stranglers or woody epiphytes, with milky sap; plants monoecious or occasionally dioecious
• Leaves alternate, rarely opposite or subverticillate, simple or lobed, on lower surface with waxy spots in axils of (basal) secondary veins or at base of midrib, margin entire or dentate, venation pinnate to subpalmate; stipules enveloping terminal bud, caducous, rarely subpersistent
• Inflorescences (syconia) bisexual (with all three kinds of flowers) or functionally unisexual (either with staminate flowers and gall flowers or with seed flowers), sessile or pedunculate, borne on young growth among leaves, or on old wood of branches, or even on old trunk, in the latter cases in panicles or fascicles; bracts at ostiole or mouth of syconia in several series, either spreading horizontally across mouth or directed into interior
• Male flowers with 1-6 tepals and 1-6 stamens; pistillode present or 0
• Female flowers with 0-8 tepals; ovary free, mostly obliquely ellipsoid or ovoid; styles 2, unequal, or 1, usually lateral; stigma usually oblong
• Fruit (fig/syconium) a syncarp, developing mainly from inflorescence wall, mostly fleshy, coloured or green
• x = 13 (polyploidy).
  

Classification Notes:

• Five subgenera: Pharmacosycea, Urostigma, Ficus, Sycidium and Sycomorus, based mainly on differences in flower construction and sex distribution

Nomenclature:

• Ficus L.
  • Linnaeus: 1059 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 482 (1754)
  • Adanson: 377 (1763)
  • Jussieu: 400 (1789)
  • Endlicher: 34 (1847)
  • Miquel: 289 (1867)
  • Bentham: 367 (1880)
  • Engler: 89 (1889)
  • Hutchinson: 78 (1916)
  • Von Breitenbach: 58 (1974)
  • Berg et al.:113 (1984)
  • Berg: 48 (1989)
  • Van Greuning: 599 (1990)
  • Berg: 39 (1991)
• Urostigma Gasp.
  • Gasparrini: 7 (1844)
  • Miquel: 514 (1847)
• Galoglychia Gasp.
  • Gasparrini: 10 (1844)
• Sycomorus Gasp.
  • Gasparrini: 86 (1845)
• Pharmacosycea Miq.
  • Miquel: 525 (1847)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 750, with ± 500 in Asia and Australia, ± 150 in the Neotropics and ± 100 in Africa/Madagascar, predominantly in moist forests, some (e.g. Ficus carica L.) in warm temperate and/or xeric regions
• Southern Africa: Species 26, widely distributed