New Insights on the Morphology of the Philippine Endemic Ficus pseudopalma Blanco

Abstract

Ficus pseudopalmaBlanco is an endemic Philippine plant with many medicinal uses and an ethnobotanically as a green vegetable or side dish.With these several eco-nomic uses of the plant, there is a need to investigate the morpho-anatomy and de-velopment of the species.Seeds of F. pseudopalmawere collected in Mt. Hamigui-tan Range Wildlife Sanctuary and grown in the Central Mindanao University Garden to monitor the growth and development of the species.Unique morpho-anatomical features include sparingly branched glabrous stem with spirally-arranged reddish ter-minal leaves crowded at the apical part, paired persistent stipules, anomocytic sto-mata, without glandular hairs and with leptocentric bundles in the petiole. The inflo-rescence is likewise unique,being enclosed to form a syconium (fig) which occurs in pairs and axillary. The flowers are imperfect with the staminate flowers situated the osteole while the pistillate flowers are at the syconia's interiorand pollinated by agaonid wasps. The seeds germinated after fourdays of sowing, and syconia were formed after 365 days exhibiting several stages of development. These morphologi-cal and developmental characteristics are important in mass propagating this en-demic plant for its medicinal and food uses.

Keywords

• anatomy
• development
• seed formation
• syconium