Dinner Plate Fig

Ficus dammaropsis, or Dinner Plate Fig, is a tropical fig tree with huge pleated leaves 60cm across and up to 90cm in length on petioles as much as 35cm long and 2.5cm thick. These emerge from a stipular sheath up to 35cm long, one of the largest of any dicotyledon.

The fruit, is the world's largest fig (syconia), up to 15 cm across, and are edible but rarely eaten except as famine food. They are pollinated by the tiny fig wasp Ceratosolon abnormis (this wasp is not present in here, hence pollination won't occur naturally in NZ). The young leaves are pickled or cooked and eaten as a vegetable by the highlanders of Papua New Guinea.