Bouché[2] Ficus americana, commonly known as the West Indian laurel fig[4] or Jamaican cherry fig,[5] is a tree in the family Moraceae which is native to the Caribbean, Mexico in the north, through Central and South America south to southern Brazil.

Ficus americana is a shrub or tree which grows up to 30 m (100 ft) tall.

[2] Recent molecular phylogenies have shown that subgenus Urostigma is polyphyletic, but have strongly supported the validity of section Americana as a discrete group (although its exact relationship to section Galoglychia is unclear).

[8] Both Aublet and Linnaeus published descriptions of this species in 1775, basing them on an illustration of Charles Plumier's published posthumously in Plantarum americanarum, quas olim Carolus Plumierus detexit (Amsterdam, 1755–1760).

There is uncertainty was to which version was published first; since the first-published description has priority, there was confusion as to which was the proper name for the species—F.

or F. perforata L. To resolve this, Cornelis Berg proposed in 2003 that Aublet's name be conserved over Linnaeus', since it was more widely used.

The wasps are similarly dependent on their fig species in order to reproduce.

Figs in section Americana of subgenus Urostigma are pollinated by wasps in the genus Pegoscapus.

Pegoscapus clusiifolidis was described from Ficus clusiifolia[11] (a synonym of F. americana).

Another study refers to P. insularis as the pollinator of F. perforata [12] (another synonym of F. americana).

That study also found that P. insularis represented a cryptic species complex.

[12] Ficus americana is found throughout the Caribbean, from the Bahamas south to Trinidad and Tobago.

It occurs in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil.

[2] It has been introduced to Florida, USA and has escaped from cultivation in Miami-Dade County.

[4] Figs are sometimes considered to be potential keystone species in communities of fruit-eating animals; their asynchronous fruiting patterns may cause them to be important fruit sources when other food sources are scarce.

This led Colombian ecologist Pablo Stevens to consider it a potential keystone species at that site.

In addition to their pollinators, Ficus species are exploited by a group of non-pollinating chalcidoid wasps whose larvae develop in its figs.

[15] In addition to Pegoscapus pollinators, non-pollinating wasps belonging to the genera Heterandrium, Aepocerus and Idarnes were found in F. americana figs in Brazil.