Ficus religiosa vs. Ficus carica?

[KarenRei]

This one is a bit more of an opinion issue (but would be nice to have some experience from fig growers).

For the greenhouse, I've raised the possibility both of cultivating figs (aka, F. carica), and - unrelated - of the possibility of a "Bodhi tree" (properly F. religiosa, ideally of proper lineage back to the original Bodhi tree... have not yet attempted to track down a source), which would be appealing not for food (obviously), but for meditation. We'll ignore for now the fact that I seriously doubt we'd be able to find and import one of a reasonable size (although it is said to be fast growing). The two issues - fruit and meditation - run contrary to each other, as F. religiosa fruit isn't eaten.  The thought occurred to me of grafting... but how well would F. carica likely graft to F. religiosa?  And - on the opinion front - would that be "ruining" F. religiosa if it had some branches producing figs?  Would it be best to just "cheat" on the meditation front, plant an F. carica, and go with the broader story of "Siddhartha Gautama meditated under a fig tree" and glance over that it was a different species of fig?

Complicating it even further, when I was looking up companies in the EU that could supply large fig trees, I found one that had some F. carica, but not F. religiosa.  But instead they had some lovely gnarly sculpted F. microcarpa (Banyans) that look like what most people think of when they think of a fig to meditate under. But they produce neither desirable fruit, *nor* are the right species!

Thoughts?

[greenman62]

i had thought  "banyan" wasnt necessarily a species ?
but a group inside Ficus ( i may be wrong)
from what ive seen, banyan and F. Religiosa look very similar.

i would think grafting would be fairly easy on all ficus.
i just tried mulberry+fig and also fig+ mulberry grafts
but, we just had a freeze, i might try again in spring.
all the mulberry+mulberry grafts and fig+fig grafts ive done have taken.
(all the figs were inside Carica)
but they seem to take readily.

personally, i like raising food plants
another thing to contemplate...
i dont know how sure they are about Buddha and the exact species of tree.
for all we know, it could have been F. Carica (ancient form, or parent?)

You could say -- "They believe it was a Ficus species similar to this..."

a lot of sales of indoor plants are referred to as "grafted Ginseng Ficus"
i had to read up on it,,,
quite interesting...  talks about grafting too...
https://www.dallasbonsai.com/care-guides/ginseng-ficus.html

people at the fig forum, can probably answer   grafting and other questions

http://figs4funforum.arghchive.com/

garden-web
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/fig

[KarenRei]

Banyan isn't a species, it's just a common name for the species name I was mentioning, F. microcarpa    A number of fig species sharing a common growth habit are known as banyans.

I can't imagine that a ficus-mulberry graft would work - they're not even in the same tribe, let alone the same genus.  But, weirder things have happened    That would be pretty neat if you succeeded with that.

There are trees that are said to have lineage back to the very original Bodhi tree, so at least it's claimed that the species (and indeed, parentage) is known.  Claimed. 

Yeah, it probably would be pretty easy to excuse any fig just by a "similar to this..." line.

Thanks for your input!

[KarenRei]

Dang.

http://www.actahort.org/books/1173/1173_34.htm

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Variation in graft compatibility of wild Ficus species as rootstock for common fig trees (Ficus carica)

Several wild Ficus species were evaluated as rootstock for the fig trees. Graft compatibilities of the fig 'Masui Dauphine' (syn. of 'San Piero') were first compared on 21 species of Ficus genus planted in 700 mL pots. Scion growth at one year after grafting was “smooth” on some species (F. palmata, F. septica, F. pumila, and F. stipulata), but was “very weak” on all 12 species of subgenus Urostigma. Some grafted trees, which had grown smoothly in 700 mL pots, transplanted into 25 L pots. The growth was “smooth” on F. palmata stock, “weak” on F. septica, and “very weak” on the other species. Fruit production of the trees on F. palmata and F. septica stock during two years after transplanting was similar to trees on control stocks (= 'Masui Dauphine'). The fig trees grafted on F. palmata were also planted in an open field, and grew smoothly for three years but rather more weakly than own rooted trees.
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F. religiosa is a Urostigma group tree  :Þ  Looks like the best we could do is plant it in partial shade (doesn't tolerate full shade :Þ) so the sunlight goes to other, more useful trees.