My Fig Tree

The fig tree fascinates me. I found a new one this morning – it has decided to grow between the spiny thorns of a cactus that has occupied its pot for more than twenty years…

The cactus has just recently flowered – being one of those seductive creatures that thrusts 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. A sensual fragrance draws all manner of night beetles and moths into its luscious depths. By morning, the pink flower cases droop toward the ground, limp and flaccid, undeniably spent.

Unlike my showy cactus, the fig is highly modest and shows great decorum and restraint when it comes to reproduction.

It is fascinating indeed. The womb shaped “fruit” is actually a syconium, the enlarged hollow tip of the flower stalk inside which closely massed tiny flowers grow on its inner wall. These flowers never open up to the outside world, but once fertilized, the true fruits are tiny drupelets that develop from these flowers and in their hundreds make up the compound ‘fruit’ that we know so well. Blackberries and raspberries are compound fruit, too. So, who will pollinate these shy maidens?

Maybe the fig tree in your garden has only female flowers and doesn’t need pollination to produce  luscious fruit. Figs come in two types: “caprifigs” with both male and female flowers and “edible figs” with only female flowers. Edible figs look just like caprifigs and the tiny fig wasp serves them both well. The male wasp never gets to leave the caprifig in which he is born. After mating, the female wasp will depart her birthplace to lay her eggs elsewhere and she collects the pollen on the way out through a tiny opening. The edible “Smyrna” fig needs the wasp to pollinate it but has female flowers shaped so they will not accept her eggs. She cross-pollinates many figs while she searches desperately for somewhere to lay her eggs.

When she finds a caprifig with female flowers, she will lay so many eggs in each caprifig fruit that very few ever produce seeds and aside from goats, few will eat the nearly seedless caprifig fruit. 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. In the 1880’s, minute tiny wasps were not recognised for their place in the breeding cycle for the best figs in the world.

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 into the pot! 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 arbor. 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. In the Ludlow Forest on the way to Bunbury, a fig tree has spread to cover about fifty square meters of land. It is like a great biosphere in its own right, 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.

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 a year or two. Figs are the true fruit of summer. Not like peaches and apricots – their intense aromas disguising 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 bowl of ripe, chilled figs and I will trouble you not at all.