Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Ficus exasperata

Ficus exasperata
Photo: Jeevan Jose, Kerala, India, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ficus exasperata, the sandpaper tree, is a deciduous fig tree from tropical Africa and southern Asia that grows as a small to medium tree up to 20 to 30 metres tall. Its rough, sandpaper-like leaves are its most recognisable feature, and it is not usually grown as a garden or houseplant.

Family
Moraceae (Fig & mulberry family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Water regularly while establishing, then allow the top soil to dry slightly between waterings.
Soil
Well-drained, fertile loam or sandy loam.
Temperature
18–32 °C; protect below 10 °C, as it is frost-intolerant.
How easy
Moderate
Safety
Toxic: Milky latex and sap from the stems and leaves can irritate skin and eyes, and fig latex is generally considered harmful if ingested.. Toxic to cats and dogs (ASPCA).
Native range
Trop. Africa, SW. Arabian Pen., India to Sri Lanka, Nicobar Is.
Climate
seasonally dry tropical

About

Ficus exasperata, also called the sandpaper tree, forest sandpaper fig, white fig, or sandpaper leaf tree, is a deciduous, and dioecious species of plant in the mulberry family Moraceae, native to tropical Africa (an area from Senegal east to Ethiopia and south to Angola and Mozambique) and southern Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Yemen).

The species was described by Martin Vahl in 1805.

Other Ficus plants

Ficus annulata · Mosaic Fig · Ficus atricha · Florida strangler fig · Roxburgh fig · Indian banyan · Weeping fig · Longleaf Fig · Ficus brachypoda · Fig · Ficus caulocarpa · Ficus celebensis

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ficus exasperata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…