Where gular grows in India

Gular grows wild in almost every part of India where the ground stays moist for much of the year: along rivers, streams, canals and village ponds, in moist forests, and around villages and temples. Kew's World Checklist (read via GBIF) gives its native range as Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka through Myanmar and South-East Asia to New Guinea and northern Australia, and lists the West Himalaya, the East Himalaya, Assam and the Andaman Islands within it.

Flora of China describes its habitat as moist places beside rivers and streams, from 100 to 1,700 m, and eFlora of India also has records from semi-evergreen forest and floodplains. In Rajasthan, the Plants of Rajasthan record lists it as growing naturally in Udaipur, Sawai Madhopur, Jaipur, Kota, Bundi, Baran, Jhalawar, Chittorgarh, Ajmer, Bhilwara and Tonk, which is the wetter east and south of the state rather than the Thar desert.

How it suits each part of India (our assessment, based on these sources):

• Grows well: the northern plains, the east and north-east, central India, the west coast, the east coast and the southern peninsula, on land that stays moist or near water.
• With care: the north-west dry zone, only beside a pond, canal or drain, or where you can water it through the first few summers; and the low Himalayan foothills.
• Not suitable: the higher Himalaya, and dry, open land with no water source in desert districts.

How to recognise gular

The easiest sign of a gular tree is bunches of round figs growing straight from the trunk and thick branches, often close to the ground. Flowers of India describes a fig tree with a crooked trunk, a spreading crown and no aerial roots, unlike the banyan.

• Leaves: alternate, elliptic and pointed; Flora of China gives the blade as about 10–14 cm long and 3–4.5 cm wide on a 2–3 cm stalk. Young leaves are softly hairy and lose most of their hairs as they age (Flora of China).
• Flowers: you cannot see them from outside. Each fig is a hollow pouch lined with hundreds of tiny flowers, which very small fig wasps reach through a tiny opening at the tip (Flowers of India).
• Figs: green when young and red or reddish purple when ripe (Plants of Rajasthan); Flora of China describes them as pear-shaped, 2–2.5 cm across and reddish orange when mature, on short leafless shoots of the trunk and old branches. eFlora of India notes two crops a year in Delhi, one in March–April and another in the rains.
• Bark: greyish brown and smooth (Flora of China). Cut leaves and twigs bleed white milky sap, like other figs.
• Shape: a medium to large tree with a broad, spreading crown, roughly 15–20 m tall.
• Look-alike: the hairy fig, Ficus hispida, sold or named as kala umbar or katgularia, also carries figs on its trunk. Flowers of India describes its leaves as opposite (in pairs), rough with coarse hairs and larger, about 10–25 cm long, and its figs as hairy. Gular leaves are alternate, and the soft hairs of young leaves mostly wear off as they age.