Ficus alii is native to Asia, Malaysia, and India. It is a large, ornamental, man-made hybrid plant that is rapidly gaining in popularity as it is more durable and easier to grow than other plants of the same genus and lacks their finickiness and tendency to shed leaves. It can be found in many forms, including bushes, braids, standards and spiraled trunks. It grows in forests and on limestone at low altitudes. In Kampala, Ficus alii can be found at Nakasero road, Mabua road, Soweto in Makerere precinct among other places.

Trees, 15-20 m tall. Its olive-colored, slender foliage makes it an extremely interesting and attractive plant.

BARK: gray, smooth. Branchlets dark brown, ribbed and densely tuberculate [pale lenticellate], sparsely pilose but rapidly glabrescent. Stipules lanceolate, 0.4-1 cm, sparsely appressed pilose. Petiole 1.3-1.7 cm glabrous.

LEAVES: blade oblong to ovate-elliptic, 8-13 × 4-6 cm, leathery, glabrous but occasionally pubescent when young, base rounded to cuneate, margin entire, apex acuminate to mucronate; basal lateral veins 2, prominent, secondary veins 10-13 on each side of midvein, conspicuous on both surfaces, and with cystoliths between veins.

FLOWERS: dioecious with each plant bearing male or female flowers. The flowers are tiny and develop within the syconium (fig). Male flowers: few, near apical pore. Gall flowers: similar to female flowers but pedicellate. Female flowers: sessile; calyx lobes 3, lanceolate; ovary ovoid; style apical.

FRUIT: Figs axillary on leafy branchlets, paired, yellow to red, purplish red with a flat or swollen opening at the apice (ostiole) when mature, ± globose to conic, slightly flat, 6-8 mm in diam., tuberculate [some subapical bracts present], sessile; involucral bracts 2 or 3, ovate, 2-3 mm, unequal in size.

An ornamental tree

Ficus Alii aid to be a great overall air purifier.

Can be grown as a house plant.