Plants trees up to 20 m tall or more,with spreadnig crowns; trunks irregularly hsapred, more or less buttressed, up to 1.5 m in diameter; bark smooth, grey; yung branches with brownish bark, hirtsute, outer layer often peeling in scales when dry. Leaves alternate; stipules lateral, free, tomentose, up to 2.5 cm long; petioles 2-8 cm long, hirsute, outer layer often peeling in scales when dry; blades papery, elliptic, broadly ovate or suborbiculare, 10-25 cm long, 10-22 cm wide, bases cordate, margins entire, tips broadly rounded, apiculate or shortly acuminate, lower surfaces glabrescent, puberulent, hirsute, or velutinous, upper surfaces usually glabrescent, venation as in F. populifolia, midrib with 6-8 pairs of lateral veins and glandular tissuse at the base of the lower surfaces. Calyptras small, pubescent or velutinuous, shed early; figs 1-few in the leaf axiles, sessile or on peduncles up to 5 mm long; basal bracts 2-3, membranous, pubescent, united below, lower part forming persistent, hairy, cup-shaped structures, upper parts caducous; receptacles gobose or depressed globose, 1-1.5(-2) cm in diamter, tomentose to densely lanate, sometimes warty; ostioles prominent, 2-lipped, often becoming gaping.
Ficus vasta grows on rocks, in woodlands and bushlands, often remaining as a single big tree on or at the base f rockes, sometimes in vegetation along seasonal streams, at 300-1170 m. It is know from regions N1, N3, and S1 of the Flora of Somalia and from Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania.