Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ficus is a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes, and hemiepiphytes in the family Moraceae. They are native throughout the tropics, with a few species extending into semi-warm temperate zones. Plants of the World Online currently recognizes 881 accepted species.
Fig pollination depends on tiny wasps of the family Agaonidae, including species such as Pegoscapus, which enter the fig through a small opening called the ostiole. Each fig species is typically associated with only one or a few specialized wasp species. The wasp carries pollen inside while searching for a place to lay eggs, making the relationship a mutualism in which both plant and wasp benefit reproductively.
The Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, planted around 288 BCE, is recorded as the oldest human-planted tree on record. It is a Ficus religiosa, grown from a branch of the original Bodhi tree beneath which Gautama Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment.
Nine subfossil Ficus carica figs dated to approximately 9400-9200 BCE were discovered at the early Neolithic site of Gilgal I in the Jordan Valley. This predates the earliest known grain cultivation in the region by many hundreds of years, making the common fig one of the earliest plant species deliberately bred for agriculture in the Middle East.
Figs provide a critical food resource for a wide range of frugivores including fruit bats, capuchin monkeys, langurs, gibbons, and birds such as hornbills, fig-parrots, and bulbuls, which may subsist almost entirely on figs when the fruit is plentiful. This broad dependence across many animal groups makes Ficus a keystone genus in many tropical forest ecosystems.
Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism all assign special significance to fig trees. Ficus religiosa is the Bodhi tree of Buddhism and the Ashvattha world tree of Hinduism. The common fig appears in the Quran in a sura named At-Tin and is listed among the Seven Species in the Hebrew Bible. Jainism prohibits the consumption of any Ficus fruit.