Figs can be eaten right off the tree. The fruit of the fig is really
an inside-out blossom — a cluster of ingrowing flowers.
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AN INSIDE-OUT Blossom
The fig tree is indeed an extraordinary creature with a complex and
fascinating biology. What we think of as the fruit is really an inside-out
blossom — a cluster of ingrowing flowers, known botanically as a
syconium. The inside of the fig is lined with hundreds of male and female
flowers. The males carry pollen while the females bear seeds.
There are more than 750 named varieties of fig trees, but all fall into
four types. The common fig, the one found growing in most gardens,
requires no pollination because all of the flowers are female. The caprifig
only produces male flowers and is pollinated by wasps. The smyrna requires
cross-pollination with a caprifig. The San Pedro bears an independent first
crop like the common fig, but the second crop is dependent on pollination.
These peculiar differences were the source of much frustration for early
cultivators who were often confounded by barren plants.
A single tree will have two distinct harvest periods during a season.
Around the middle of June comes the “breba” crop, the fruit that emerges
from the old wood on the tree. This season is very short and serves as a
preview of the larger, longer harvest from the new branches of the tree.
Another unique aspect of figs is that unlike other commercial fruit trees
that have a relatively short lifecycle, figs can be prolific for 50 years or more.
They also play a vital role in the ecosystem.
In his book, “Gods, Wasps & Stranglers,” rainforest ecologist Mike
Shanahan says more than 1,200 species eat figs, including one-tenth of the
world’s birds along with nearly all known fruit bats and dozens of species
of primates, dispersing seeds as they digest.
“Ecologists therefore call figs a keystone resource,” Shanahan writes.
“Like the keystone of a bridge, if figs disappeared everything else could
come crashing down.”
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