Photo by Clarence Burke.
Botanical name: Ficus pumila
Common name: Creeping fig
Family name: Moraceae (Mulberry family)
Native range: East Asia
Location in Duke Gardens: Historic Gardens, Doris Duke Center Gardens
USDA Hardiness Zones: 8-11
If you look closely at the stonework connecting the Mary Duke Biddle Rose Garden and the Walker Dillard Kirby Perennial Allée or bordering the Virtue Peace Pond and the Angle Amphitheater, you’ll it covered with vines with unusually tiny heart-shaped leaves and adventitious roots emerging from the flattened woody stems. This unobtrusive plant is the creeping fig (Ficus pumila), a relative of both the common edible fig (F. carica) and the many species of tropical figs commonly grown as houseplants, like the weeping fig (F. benjamina) and the rubber fig (F. elastica).
Like all figs, creeping fig is full of sticky latex—which, in this case, it uses to glue itself to its surroundings, making it challenging to remove once attached. As with many species of vines, including English ivy (Hedera helix), creeping fig has two forms, each with a drastically different appearance. Once creeping fig reaches a certain size, it will produce horizontal branches with larger, leathery leaves and fig-shaped “fruits”—which are actually specialized compound flowers known as synconia, and which are pollinated by tiny wasps in its native range. However, creeping fig is not cold hardy, which means that it regularly dies back during the winter here in North Carolina, and thus remains perpetually in a juvenile state.
Because creeping fig is so sensitive to frost, it is usually grown as a houseplant in temperate regions, but it can also be grown outdoors in the right locations. Here at Duke Gardens, the same stone walls that support the plants also serve to keep them warm during the winter; the rocks and masonry absorb heat during the day, which they slowly radiate at night, creating a warmer microclimate that keeps the creeping fig from being exposed to the full brunt of the winter chill. Thus, growing creeping fig on stone walls is not only for aesthetics—it is also a creative and way to allow the plant to thrive where it otherwise would not. As a bonus, this dependency also ensures that creeping fig will remain where it is planted and never take over the garden.