ficus

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of numerous tropical trees, shrubs, or climbers of the genus Ficus, having pearlike multiple fruits.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In botany, a very large genus of tropical and subtropical trees or shrubs, of the urticaceous tribe Artocarpeæ, characterized by bearing their minute unisexual flowers within a nearly closed globose or pear-shaped receptacle. The genus is remarkable for the peculiar arrangement by which cross-fertilization is effected through the agency of insects. There are always three forms of flowers, the staminate, the pistillate, and a third, the gall-flower, which resembles the pistillate but is incapable of fertilization, and is usually occupied by the pupa of a species of Blastophaga or other hymenopterous insect. In a large group of species the three forms are found within the same receptacle; but in much the larger number, as in the common fig, the female flowers are in one receptacle and the male and gall flowers together in another. The perfect insect is formed synchronously with the maturity of the pollen of the male flowers, through which it makes its way and escapes by a perforation made at the apex of the receptacle. In what way it conveys the pollen to the pistillate flowers in the closed female receptacle is not understood, but it is believed that it is done, and that by this means only the female flowers are fertilized. Generally the barren and fertile receptacles are upon the same tree and are similar in appearance, but in the common fig they are upon separate trees, and differ so much in form that the sterile, known as the wild fig or caprifig, has been considered by many botanists as a species distinct from the other. There are about 600 species, the greater number belonging to the islands of the Indian and Pacific oceans, though there are many in tropical America. Three or four species are found in Florida. The genus includes the common fig (F. Carica), the banian (F. Bengalensis), the india-rubber tree (F. elastica), etc. The wood is generally soft and valueless. See fig, and cut under banian.
2. n. In zoology, an old genus of mollusks: same as Pyrula.
3. n. In surgery, a fleshy excrescence, often soft and reddish, sometimes hard, hanging by a peduncle or formed like a fig. It occurs on the eyelids, chin, tongue, anus, or reproductive organs. Also called fig-wart.

Wiktionary

1. n. botany A plant belonging to the genus Ficus, including the rubber plant.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A genus of trees or shrubs, one species of which (F. Carica) produces the figs of commerce; the fig tree.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. large genus of tropical trees or shrubs or climbers including fig trees