MORACEAE, in botany, a family of dicotyledons, belonging to the series Urticales, to which belongs also the nettle family (Urticaceae, q.v.). It contains about 55 genera with about Boo species, mostly trees or shrubs, widely distributed in the warmer parts of the earth. The largest genus, Ficus (the fig. q.v.), con tains Boo species spread through tropical and sub-tropical regions, and includes the common fig of the Mediterranean region (Ficus carica), the banyan (F. benghalensis), and the india-rubber plant (F. elastica); many of the species are epiphytic, sometimes cling ing so tightly round the host-plant with their roots as to strangle it.
Morus (mulberry, q.v.) contains ten species of trees or bushes in north temperate regions and in the mountains of the tropics. Artocarpus, including A. incise (bread-fruit, q.v.), and A. integri folia (jack-tree), has forty species, chiefly natives of the Indian Archipelago. The plants are rich in latex which may be very poi
sonous, as in Antiaris toxicaria, the Upas tree (q.v.) of Java, or sweet and nutritious as in Brosimum Galactodendron, the cow-tree (q.v.) of Venezuela. The latex often yields caoutchouc as in spe cies of Ficus (e.g., F. elastica), Cecropia (q.v.), a tropical Ameri can genus with thirty to forty species, and others. In eastern United States the family is represented by Morus (mulberry) and one species of Madura (osage orange), the latter being much planted for hedges. In the western United States (Rocky Moun tain region) there are no native representatives of the family.
From the evidence of leaf-fossils, it is probable that the genus Ficus existed as far north as Greenland in the Cretaceous era and was generally distributed in North America and Europe in the Tertiary period up to Miocene times.