
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Habit
This Moreton Bay Fig is in the grounds of Payne Road State School at The Gap. It is on the bank of Enoggera Creek. The photo shows the classic spreading form and buttress trunk of a Moreton Bay Fig. Leaves are ovate-elliptical or oblong-elliptical, shortly drawn to a blunt point at the apex. Fruit is fig, orange to purple with creamy white dots; globular, up to 2.5 cm in diameter. Ripe over several months of the year. Attracts birds and fruit-bats. Aborigines ate the sweet fruit and used the bark to make string.

Photo: Anne Jones
Early Brisbane
This watercolour by Henry Boucher Bowerman shows Brisbane in 1835 with a Moreton Bay Fig in the left foreground. The fig is still standing next to the Gallery of Modern Art.

Image: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland 3944-1v000r001