A Botanical Curiosity
The edible fig is a freak of botany. The modern fig tree (Ficus carica) is a descendant of the wild caprifig, modified by human intervention. Caprifig trees do produce a form of fruit, which can (just about) be eaten, but caprifigs look and taste wizened and unimpressive. The Ficus genus is part of the wider family known as Moraceae, which means that figs form part of the same family as mulberries and breadfruit.
Fig trees are juicy and aromatic and often beautifully shaped. They are fine trees to sit under. When cut, the branches ooze a white sap which can be an irritant on the skin. The bark and the wood are attractive to rodents and rabbits, while the soft fruit is especially vulnerable to birds. In traditional cultures, scaring small animals away from the fig trees was a pleasant job for children.
Edible figs were first developed probably around 6,000 years ago, when a number of other wild fruit products began to be improved as part of the development of human civilization.
Spanish dictionaries define the fig as the second of two fruits of the fig tree. The first fruit they describe with the word breva. Like caprifigs, these early-fruiting brevas (sometimes found in English, though not in the Oxford English Dictionary, as ‘brebas’) can be eaten, but they are often better baked or stewed. Raw, they may taste unripe. In France, brebas are known as figue-fleurs and, at least in Toulouse, are not generally considered edible. In Spanish Catalonia (where they are known as figaflor or bacora) and in Italy (known as fioroni), by contrast, they are considered not only edible but delicious. Catalan sources point out that Plato preferred brebas to figs, and that Galen recommended brebas to competitors in the Olympic Games as ideal food for athletes. Italian sources describe the fiorone verde dottato as a small green fruit with a pink interior which is delightfully sweet.
Ripe and unripe figs grow together on the same tree.
Clearly, however, there is some confusion between figs and brebas in common parlance. Often the fruit known as ‘green fig’ will in fact be a form of breba. In the version of Catalan spoken in the fig-rich island of Menorca, figaflor is not regarded as a breba but as the earliest fruiting of all the varieties of fig, while in Ischia in Italy they prize a fruit known as fiorone nero (black breba), a black fruit with pink flesh which has a reputation for keeping and travelling well. This must surely also be an early cropping fig. There is certainly confusion in the Larousse Gastronomique. My own edition states, with typical confidence, that there are three types of fig: the white fig, the purple fig and the red fig. This categorical assertion is accompanied by a captioned photograph of a green fig.
Ripe brebas. Plato was said to have preferred spring brebas to late-summer figs. Many Catalonians would agree with him.
Black or purple figs are known to be ‘dominant’ over white or green figs. This is demonstrated by the fact that when a black strain is cross-bred with a white strain, the resulting hybrid is always black.
While most Spanish varieties of fig do indeed have two crops, this is not universal. There are single-crop fig varieties which fruit early – like the Menorcan figaflor – and there are, more usually, single-crop fig varieties which fruit late, in the northern hemisphere in September or October. Most trees in Turkey are single-cropping, and the Turkish language does not distinguish between figs and brebas, both being covered by the word incir. There are also, remarkably, especially in Italy, fig trees which bear three crops. The early Italian crop is the fioroni; the main fig crop fichi or forniti; and the third crop is known as cimaruoli.
The fruit nestling in its leaves.
The fig wasp in close-up. The similarity to the garden wasp is very slight. |
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This multi-cropping is very unusual among fruits. But, botanically, the fig is stranger than that. To begin with, it is not strictly a fruit at all, but rather a tiny cluster of ingrowing flowers; second, many species of fig tree require the pollinating intervention of tiny fig wasps or blastophaga before they can fruit at all; and third, the fig is the only fruit tree which does not produce a display of blossom in the weeks before the fruit begins to form. The Chinese word for fig translates as ‘fruit without a flower’.
Commentators tend to say that the fig is ‘neither fruit nor flower’, but a little of both. The technical word for the fig’s pattern of growth is ‘inflorescence’, meaning flowering inwards. The tiny flowers never bloom, of course, because they never see the light, but they ripen inwards and the ripened little seeds and their coating become something which is popularly known as the sweetest of fruits.
As mentioned in the Introduction, the two principal types of fig are often distinguished as Adriatic figs and Smyrna figs. Adriatic figs often produce brebas; they are usually self-pollinating, and hence easier to grow. Unfortunately, there is a widespread belief that Smyrna figs, especially those of genuine Turkish origin, taste better. It is regarded as a truism that the finest figs grown in California are the Smyrna figs known as ‘Sari Lop’. Smyrna figs do not usually bear brebas and will only bear ripe fruit if they have been pollinated by fig wasps, in a process known as ‘caprification’. Caprification is the transfer of caprifig pollen to the ingrowing flowers of immature figs by the introduction of fig wasps. In peasant cultures over many centuries the fig wasps were first introduced to pollen-bearing caprifigs, and then inserted into the figs by hand.
Unripe green figs, taking their special shape before ripening. |
So the expression ‘freak of botany’ is no exaggeration. We are dealing with fruit from multi-cropping trees, which are not really fruit at all but a form of ingrowing flower in a ribbed and skin-like case, and which often depend upon a strange little insect in order to be fertilized and to thrive. The fig is also dependent upon particular forms of climate and environment: it is intolerant of frost and even of cold weather; it likes hot weather but not damp heat, although a very slight dampening when the crop is almost formed can be beneficial. Fig trees are superbly resistant to drought.
It is sometimes said, especially by Turkish writers, that the ideal climate for the ripening of figs is to be found in the valley of the winding Meander river (Homer’s Skamander, known as Büyük Menderes in modern Turkey – our word ‘meander’ derives from its name). The Meander valley has hot and dry summers, with temperatures regularly rising above 40°C. During June and July, baking, dry winds come from the north and enable the fruit to move towards perfect ripeness, before the winds turn westerly and slightly damper in August, allowing the ripe figs to plump out without over-drying.
Figs also grow well in desert oases, where they are suited to the combination of hot sun and groundwater. In his Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, John Lewis Burckhardt (1784–1817) describes the Arabian settlement of Tebouk:
One day from Dzat Hadj is Tebouk, a castle, with a village of Felahein, of the tribe of Arabs Hammeide. There is a copious source of water, and gardens of figs and pomegranate trees, where Badintshaus, onions and other vegetables are also cultivated.
Other climates which are especially favourable for ripe fig crops are those of North Africa (notably Algeria); the Mediterranean islands (Cyprus, Crete, Chios, the Cyclades, Malta, Sicily and Pantelleria, Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Corsica); the Lebanon, Israel and Palestine; Syria and the Crimean part of Russia; Yemen and Iraq, where, as we shall see, cultivated figs originated; Peru, Mexico and parts of California.
