Past Event
Saturday, May 11, 2024, 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Horticultural Tours: Fig Trees & Stranglers of Balboa Park
1549 El Prado, San Diego, 92101
Cost: Free
Balboa Park is home to a variety of fig trees from around the world. The fig family of over 800 species is unlike any other plant group. Fig trees have historically served as national and religious symbols; the source of food, medicine, and timber; and a keystone species supporting entire ecosystems. As flowering trees with “invisible flowers,” each fig species is dependent on its own special tiny wasp for perpetuation. Some figs are famous for “strangling” other trees, others for creating an entire forest composed of that single tree species, and still others grown as bonsai that can live for hundreds of years.