Ficus insipida is a common tropical tree in the fig genus of the family Moraceae growing in forest habitats along rivers.

[3] The tree was described in 1806 under the scientific name Ficus insipida (literally "insipid fig") by Carl Ludwig Willdenow, having studied the herbarium specimens collected in Caracas by the gardener Franz Bredemeyer in the 1780s during the Märter Expedition [de].

[5] In the 1960 Flora of Panama, Gordon P. DeWolf Jr. lumped the species F. adhatodifolia and F. crassiuscula as synonyms of F. insipida,[6] but his taxonomic interpretation was not followed by subsequent authorities.

[3][8][18] In Bolivia it has been recorded in the northern and eastern departments of Beni, Cochabamba, La Paz, Pando and Santa Cruz: most of the country except the Andes in the southwest.

[17] In Colombia the species has been recorded in the departments of Amazonas, Antioquia, Bolívar, Boyacá, Caquetá, Casanare, Cauca, Chocó, Cundinamarca, La Guajira, Guaviare, Huila, Magdalena, Meta, Nariño, Norte de Santander, Putumayo, Risaralda, Santander, Tolima and Valle.

[20] Although it is often stated that the Amazon rainforest is ancient, much of it has in fact grown quite recently, after the end of the last Ice Age and with a large expansion to the south 3,000 years ago.

[21] The scabra subspecies appears to have a slightly different habitat preference, being typically found on slopes in either rainforest or mountain savannas in the Guianas.

[22] It is a monoecious species,[12] the figs, actually a specialised inflorescence called a synconium, are densely coated in minute flowers ('florets') on the inside, both functionally male and female.

The stigmas of the female flowers are thickly intertwined and coherent to each other at the same height (short-styled florets are simply positioned somewhat higher using pedicels and somewhat longer ovaries to maintain the stigma surface), and form a surface layer a certain distance from the inner wall of the fig, called the synstigma - this synstigma essentially functions as a platform on which the pollinating wasps must walk and from where they must oviposit their eggs.

Meanwhile, the male flowers within the fig finally shed their pollen, which adhere to the females in specialised pockets or simply onto their body surface.

[10][23] Nevertheless, entering the cavity is a strenuous task, and the females are often die in the tunnel, or are damaged by the ordeal, with their wings invariably torn off from forcing their way through the bracts.

[5] An especially important species to aid in dispersal via endozoochory in Costa Rica is possibly the large and common trout-like fish Brycon guatemalensis, of which the adults primarily feed upon the fallen leaves and figs of F. insipida.

[24] The leaves and especially the fruit of F. insipida and F. yoponensis are a preferred food of howler monkeys in Panama (Alouatta palliata), with one troop on Barro Colorado Island spending one quarter of its time feeding on these two types of trees.

[27] It was initially observed that intestinal nematodes dissolved in a ficin solution, which increased interest in the product at the time as an anthelmintic, although it was not widely adopted.

It is used for cleaning in the production of stitching material for sutures, to prepare animal arteries before transplantation into humans,[27] and for unmasking antigens in serology.

[27] According to Schultes and Raffauf in their 1990 book The Healing Forest, the fruit of Ficus anthelmintica (an antiquated synonym of F. insipida) has been used by an unknown people somewhere in the northern Amazon of Brazil as an aphrodisiac and for what they categorise as a 'memory enhancer'.

[29] As of 2021, the conservation status has not been assessed by the Centro Nacional de Conservação da Flora,[30] nor in the IUCN Red List,[31] nor by the Costa Rican national authority.