Moreton Bay fig

The Moreton Bay fig is a giant evergreen strangler fig from eastern Australia, famous for its massive buttressed trunk, curtains of reddish aerial roots and dense, dark, leathery foliage. Planted in mild coastal cities worldwide, it becomes one of the widest-crowned shade trees a park can hold, and specimens in the Azores and Madeira are local landmarks.

• Its aerial roots can reach the ground and thicken into extra trunks, so one tree can look like a small grove.
• Like all figs it depends on a single species of tiny fig wasp for pollination, which is why many planted trees abroad set no viable seed.
• In the wild it often starts life as an epiphyte in another tree's canopy, then sends roots down and eventually engulfs its host.

Care
Give it enormous space and keep it far from walls, pavements and pipes, since its surface roots are notorious for lifting anything nearby.