Free Food/Gardening/
The Fig Tree — Fascinating and Adored for Its Fleshy Fruit
Unlike my showy cactus, the fig is highly modest and shows great decorum
The fig tree fascinates me. One morning, I found a new one — it had decided to grow between the spiny thorns of a cactus that had occupied its pot for more than twenty years.
The cactus had just recently flowered — being one of those seductive creatures that thrust forward its large, swollen flower cases to burst open in the dark of night, for only a few rapturous minutes. Great creamy, lustrous white petals surround the heart of its voluptuous centre, where a succulent yellow stamen rests against yellow-tinged petals.
An exotic fragrance draws all manner of night beetles and moths into its luscious depths. By morning, the pink flower cases have closed and drooped toward the ground, limp and undeniably spent.
Unlike my showy cactus, the fig is highly modest and shows great decorum and restraint when it comes to reproduction.
The fascinating vase-shaped ‘fruit’ is similar to blackberries.
It is fascinating indeed. The vase-shaped ‘fruit’ is a syconium, the enlarged hollow tip of the flower stalk that has closely massed tiny flowers growing inside on its inner wall. These flowers never open to the outside world, but once fertilized, the true fruits develop. They are tiny drupelets growing from these flowers and in their hundreds make up the compound ‘fruit’ that we know so well. Blackberries and raspberries are compound fruits, too.
So, who will pollinate these shy maidens, who never show themselves to the world? They will be well served by the tiny fig wasp.
There are two types of fig trees and they have four types of flowers.
* ‘Caprifigs’ have male flowers that produce pollen and female flowers that are the perfect place for the wasp to lay her eggs. Two types of flowers.
- ‘Edible figs’ (such as the ‘Smyrna’ type) must be pollinated by the wasp because they have no male flowers but two different types of female flowers:
- short-stemmed ones in which the wasp can lay her eggs,
- and long-stemmed flowers shaped so they will not accept her eggs.
As she crawls about inside the fruit, the long-stemmed flowers in which she cannot lay her eggs get fertilised by the pollen she brought with her, and these flowers produce the seeds of the fig.
On the other hand, maybe the fig tree in your garden is an ‘edible fig’ that has only ‘mule’ flowers that do not need pollination to produce luscious fruit and that no wasp will enter.
All ‘edible figs’ look and smell just like ‘caprifigs’, which becomes a critical fact for the tiny female fig wasp.
Female flowers are called ‘pistils’ and the pollen is brought from the male flowers, called ‘stamens.’ In most plants, the stamen and the pistil are in the same flower, but with the fig, they are separate flowers.
In the hibiscus flower, above, you can see the pollen on top of the stamen in the middle of the flower. The pistil is at the bottom of the stamen at the base of the delicate blossom.
Male and female wasps hatch inside the fig in which their egg was laid.
Male and female wasps hatch inside the fig in which their egg was laid. If it is a ‘caprifig,’ the eggs are laid in the female flowers (pistil), and they develop as larvae (like caterpillars) inside a small enclosed ball called a ‘gall.’
The larvae eat some of the fleshy parts of this ‘gall’ after the egg hatches and within a short time, the larvae mature into adult wasps. The males usually hatch first and when they emerge from their ‘gall’, they promptly fertilise the female before she can hatch.
The blind, wingless male wasp rarely gets to leave the ‘caprifig’ in which he is born, except by way of making tunnels to the outside of the fig, through one of which the female will later escape her birth prison. If he does leave through one of his tunnels, he soon dies.
After mating, the new female wasp will emerge from her own ‘gall’ and prepare to depart her birthplace to lay her eggs elsewhere. She collects pollen by brushing against the male flowers on the way out, crawling through the inside of the fig in the tunnels carved by the male.
The stamens will be rich with pollen and a large fig orchard will have a haze in the spring air as thousands of tiny wasps emerge to start their new life cycle. A fig wasp is only 2mm long and could easily fit through the eye of a needle.
While there are almost 1,000 types of fig wasp, each will pollinate only one or two types of fig tree.
She wants to find another ‘caprifig’ but will be drawn by the chemical smells released by a fig ready to be pollinated; she is equally attracted to a ‘caprifig’ or an ‘edible fig.’
There are about 900 types of fig wasp because there are 100s of varieties of ficus and each type of fig wasp pollinates only one or two types of fig tree.
When she selects a new fig, she crawls through the ostiole. This is a tiny opening at the top of the fig, and it is a very hostile journey for her. The passage is so narrow she loses her wings and antennae as she crawls in and now, she will never leave. As she enters the fig, she leaves the pollen with her from the ‘caprifig’ of her birth, thus cross-pollinating the fig. She will try to lay an egg in many of the flowers but in an ‘edible fig’ she will not be able to do so.
Every flower that is fertilised and that does not receive an egg will become a seed, when the fig ripens. After she has finished laying her eggs, exhausted and trapped, she will die, and the fig will produce an enzyme that absorbs her body.
The ‘caprifig’ is the key.
If she finds a “caprifig, (with only male flowers) she will lay so many eggs in each fruit that very few ever produce seeds and aside from goats, few will eat the nearly seedless ‘caprifig’ fruit.
‘Caprifig’ literally means ‘goat fig’. In the 1880s, minute tiny wasps were not recognised for their place in the breeding cycle for the best figs in the world. It took almost twenty years in California before fig farmers understood and accepted the European practice of hanging some old ‘caprifigs’ on a branch close to your own ‘Smyrna’ fig tree to get fruit.
The third crop of the year for the ‘caprifig’ is called the ‘mamme’ crop and it is in these figs that the tiny wasps survive through the cold winter months. As spring approaches, the wintering larvae will start the life cycle again and the female wasps emerge to begin their job of guaranteeing figs for summer.
So, from whence comes my new fig tree?
The fig tree will grow anywhere: from a leaf, a cutting, or even a fig itself. Perhaps a little bird sitting in the tree above has “dropped” a seed from its own devouring of a fig into the pot in which my tree grew!
They spring up on roadsides where careless gardeners drop prunings on their way to the tip; they bear testimony to the homes and lives of those long gone — when they mark their passing by remaining by what was once a back door or a garden arbour. They tempt us with their luscious fruit — large with fine, deep purple skin that easily peels away and inside, the flesh is deep red and juicy.
Fig trees live for hundreds of years, and they are tough and resilient. The oldest known living fig tree planted in the “New World” away from Europe is the Pizarro Tree, planted about 1538 at the Governor’s Palace in Lima, Peru.
In the Ludlow Forest (Western Australia) on the way to Bunbury, a fig tree has spread to cover about fifty square meters of land.
It is like a great biosphere, inhabited by exquisite golden orb spiders and wonderful little green spiders that match its leaves or ones that look like bird droppings. Flies and beetles, all manner of birds and small animals live within its shady leaves and feast upon its bounty. Tourists stop by and enjoy the harvest.
On the Old Coast Road to Bunbury, large fig trees more than one hundred years old bow their branches heavy with fruit, year after year, while the stones that once were the Coach House are long thrown down. Many times we stopped there, to climb the twisted branches seeking their luscious prize.
Stick a large branch from an old fig tree none too carefully in the ground and give it a bit of water, and it will reward you with its fruit in just two or three years. Figs are the true fruit of summer. Not like peaches and apricots — their intense aromas disguise their short-lived season of delicate taste. Figs have substance and stamina. On a hot summer’s day, just give me a glass or two of champagne and a bowl of ripe, chilled figs and I will trouble you not at all.
Are Fig Trees Vegan? You need to decide for yourself.
For more information about The Ludlow Forest, please go to:
http://www.roamingdownunder.com Select Western Australia and scroll down the page.
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