Ficus altissimaBlume

council tree

WFO wfo-0000687266 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Ficus altissima, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. a Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-18 / obs. 144459919

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 21 botanical countries

Regions where Ficus altissima is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Malaya, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicobar Is., Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam China South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanAssamBangladeshCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosMalayaMyanmarNepalPhilippinesSri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnam Andaman Is.Nicobar Is.
Native distribution of Ficus altissima, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Assam ASS
Bangladesh BAN
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Malaya MLY
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Nicobar Is. NCB
Philippines PHI
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 182 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 11.4 °C 13.8 °C 22.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.9 °C 29.9 °C 34.6 °C
Annual rainfall 826 mm 1,598 mm 2,394 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 20 mm 110 mm 211 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 182 research-grade observations of Ficus altissima that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 6 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Ficus altissima f. laccifera (Roxb.) King
  • Ficus altissima var. laccifera (Roxb.) Prain
  • Ficus laccifera Roxb.
  • Ficus latifolia Oken
  • Urostigma altissimum (Blume) Miq.
  • Urostigma lacciferum (Roxb.) Miq.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.