Fig Tree

Fig trees are tropical insurance policies. While most rainforest trees fruit seasonally - all at once, then nothing for months - figs fruit year-round. During lean seasons when other food disappears, figs keep frugivores alive: birds, bats, monkeys, and dozens of other species that would starve without this asynchronous resource. Research shows figs support 10% of frugivore species despite representing only 1% of tree abundance. Remove figs, and you trigger cascading extinctions across the ecosystem.

But figs themselves survive through absolute dependence. Each fig species relies on a single fig wasp species for pollination in an obligate mutualism - neither can reproduce without the other. The Malagasy star orchid demonstrates co-evolution's extreme: Darwin observed its 30cm nectar spur in 1862 and predicted a moth with a 30cm tongue must exist. Forty years later, that exact moth was discovered. This is interdependence at molecular precision.

For business, fig trees teach that keystone value comes from providing asynchronous resources - being available when alternatives disappear. The companies that become infrastructure are those that operate when others shut down: payment systems during market crashes, logistics during disasters, credit during liquidity crises. Fig trees thrive not by being the biggest or most efficient, but by being reliably present during everyone else's off-season.