THE WEEPING FIG

THE WEEPING FIG

LATIN NAME: FICUS BENJAMINA

HOMELAND: INDIA

The Ficus Benjamina tree, whose homeland is India, is more commonly known as the weeping fig, because its leaves hanging down are likened to tears.

This tree, which has distinctive fig fruits, is actually a very close relative of the known fig tree. In order to be a fruit, it needs the polen carrying process of the fig wasp, which is likened to a mosquito at first glance.

In its natural environment of this tree, you see small yellow fig fruits grow. Today, when figs are mentioned in the World, the Ficus Carica genus, whose homeland is the Muğla region of Turkey, comes to mind. Ficus Carica means Caria Fig and takes its name from Caria, the ancient name of Muğla Region.

Ficus benjamina, which can be grown in a tangled and braided way with Special Landscape techniques and is one of the most preferred ornamental plants in interior spaces such as offices and stores, has started to be mentioned with Adam and Eve, and if mythology and folklore are taken as a basis, it is probably the most preferred ornamental plant of the Botanical World.

Since it has been growing naturally in every region of the world near the equator for about 80 million years, no other tree, from pagan mythologies to the religious narratives of primitive tribes, from the holy verses of Abrahamic religions to folkloric tales, has such an impact on human imagination as the ficustree, which has more than 700 species.

According to narratives and written sources, the ficus tree has not only witnessed history, but also shaped history.

You can read the story about Hinduism and Buddhism, the cultures where theFicus tree is most blessed, on our page Ficus Microcarpa / Banyantree, another Ficus in our garden.

The approximately 5000-year-old tablets are the oldest documents in which the Sumerian King Urukagina and the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar praise the ficus tree as the oldest and most valuable tree, in which the ficus tree appeared in writing.

The ficus tree, which appears as the tree from which the Goddess Hathor came out on the way to Heaven after death in Egyptian Mythology, became the subject of scientific observations of Aristotle's student Theophrastus, who discovered that each ficus tree had its own pollinator bee during the ancient Greek period.

The Roman Gaius Plinius Secundus mentions the Ficus fruit in his encyclopedia called Historia Naturalis as a medicine for diseases that cannot pass.

The medicine that lifted Hezekiah, King of Judah, from his death bed in the Bible is the ficus fruit that is crushed and rubbed into his wounds.