By Emma Rooksby, coordinator of Growing Illawarra Natives
On hot days like we've been having lately, a broad, shady tree that keeps everything and everyone below a little cooler is a wonderful thing.
My thoughts have been going to the big Moreton Bay Figs (Ficus macrophylla) that grow around the region, some of them remnant trees from long ago, others planted as shade over milking sheds for settlers' dairy farms. These trees are often landmarks, visible from far away; the giant fig tree for which the suburb of Figtree was named was a Moreton Bay Fig.
There's one near me in Mount Pleasant, again on a former dairy, which is at least twice as broad as it is high, and visible from many other places around the suburb. It's a haven for all sorts of birds, from White-headed Pigeons and Top-knot Pigeons to the raucous Channel-billed Cuckoos that make their way here each spring from New Guinea and Indonesia.
Grey-headed Flying-foxes, which are now a threatened species, also love this fig. Despite their size and girth, Moreton Bay Figs still feature on verges around the region, including near Thirroul Library, on upper Crown Street and many other place.
In their natural rainforest habitat, Moreton Bay Figs typically grow as strangler figs, starting life as tiny seedlings high in the canopy, in the fork of an established tree. It can take many years for their roots to descend to the ground, but once the roots are in soil the fig really takes off, growing quickly and squeezing the life out of the host tree. A notorious specimen is visible in the Illawarra Rhododendron and Rainforest Garden, where it's busy trying to strangle another enormous fig tree, a Small-leaved Fig (Ficus obliqua). It remains to be seen which tree will prevail.
A great place to see Moreton Bay Figs is at the University of Wollongong, where this species has been used to great advantage to create shady study areas adjacent to the watercourse that runs through the campus. The campus is cooled by the large numbers of trees present, but even so, it's often a couple of degrees cooler beneath this fig than on the surrounding lawns.
