Balboa Park Tours: Fig Trees and Stranglers of Balboa Park
Forever Balboa Park offers thematic park tours that focus on the park’s unique biodiversity and highlight the park’s horticultural wonders on the second Saturday of each month. Led by park volunteer and horticultural enthusiast Bill Edwards, the free tours leave from the Visitors Center at 9:30 a.m. unless otherwise indicated. Walks last 1.5 to 2 hours and are typically less than 1 mile on level terrain.
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.