strangler fig

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Related to Stranger fig: Ficus aurea

strangler fig

Any of several fig trees that grow at first as epiphytes on another tree and then send roots down to the ground around the trunk of the host tree, especially Ficus aurea, of southern Florida and the West Indies.

[From the fact that it strangles its host.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun	1.	strangler fig - a strangler tree native to southern Florida and West Indies; begins as an epiphyte eventually developing many thick aerial roots and covering enormous areas Ficus aurea, Florida strangler fig, golden fig, wild fig Ficus, genus Ficus - large genus of tropical trees or shrubs or climbers including fig trees fig tree - any moraceous tree of the tropical genus Ficus; produces a closed pear-shaped receptacle that becomes fleshy and edible when mature
	2.	strangler fig - a common tropical American clusia having solitary white or rose flowers Clusia major, Clusia rosea, pitch apple genus Clusia - tropical American aromatic trees or shrubs; often epiphytic; some stranglers strangler, strangler tree - an epiphytic vine or tree whose aerial roots extend down the trunk of a supporting tree and coalesce around it eventually strangling the tree