The fig family spans a billionfold range, from forest-sized banyans to thumbnail succulents
One Indian banyan can spread over two hectares. Its relative Dorstenia barnimiana is a stemless bulb a few centimetres wide carrying a single leaf. Both belong to the Moraceae, the mulberry or fig family, and the gap in mass between them is roughly a billion to one.
Moraceae holds about 48 genera and more than 1,100 species. Besides figs and mulberries it includes breadfruit and jackfruit, and most members bear fleshy fruit packed with seeds. The only traits shared by every species are latex glands in leaves and stems and milky sap in soft tissue. Useful clues in the field include tiny compound flowers, two carpels with one sometimes reduced, and compound fruit. Many of the apparent flowers are really pseudanthia, reduced clusters that mimic a single bloom.
Variety runs through the leaves too. They are usually alternate, occasionally opposite, lobed or smooth, evergreen or deciduous. A single mulberry tree can carry both lobed and unlobed leaves, with the most deeply cut ones on vigorous young shoots. The small flowers generally have either petals or sepals but not both, and male and female parts sit in separate flowers. Stamen shape hints at pollination: bent-in stamens fling pollen to the wind, while straight ones suggest insects, which pollinate Ficus, Artocarpus, Dorstenia and a few other genera.
Having separate male and female plants appears to be the family's original state, and plants carrying both sexes evolved independently at least four times. Molecular studies moved the family from the abandoned order Urticales into the Rosales, alongside the nettle, elm and hemp families. Fossils go back to the late Cretaceous, and molecular clocks suggest diversification had begun by the mid-Cretaceous.
The family ranges across warm temperate and tropical regions almost worldwide, but is largely absent north of about 45 degrees latitude and from most of the Sahara and Arabian deserts. Most species come from the Old World tropics, especially Asia and the Pacific islands.
Source: Moraceae
