Alright it is 03h30 and I can't sleep because I am daydreaming* about figs and fig trees - so, Seattle midnight fruit twitter friends, let's discuss the bizarro world of the absolutely wildest temperate fruit, the FIG

**THREAD ALERT** https://twitter.com/UrsulaV/status/1292168172817338375

This thread is brought to you by a months-long dispute between @ursulav and @neolithicsheep from last year that lives rent-free inside my head for some reason. Basically, the dispute is about how to prune a fig tree - if you cut the branches back, will it bear fruit???

The answer is yes! no! and also maybe!

Almost all figs we grow, esp the ones planted in Seattle and environs, will try to bear two crops per year:

a 'breba' crop in the early summer on *last year's wood*

and a 'main' crop in the late summer/autumn on *this year's wood*

Of course, because we are talking about fig trees here, there has to be a wild number of permutations that have to be considered. Some varieties have good breba fruit, some do not, some have tiny breba crop, and some have a breba crop that is essentially their main crop... oy

The term 'breba' comes from 'breva,' a Spanish word meaning ... I'm not quite sure what, actually, but it's used for the early fig crop.

Oftentimes, here in western Washington, we don't get enough heat through the summer to ripen a 'main' crop for many varieties of figs.

But some varieties will ripen a 'main' crop! So there!

And to add another hilarious layer of complexity, all these figs - every last one of them - is sterile.

That's right, they are all female flowers on female trees growing without pollination. They are parthenocarpic.

Parthenocarpic figs are also called 'common' figs although they are the result of a single dominant mutation. Parthenocarpic figs have been found in archeological digs in human settlements dating back 11,000 years. How you like them, uh, apples?

Now, parthenocarpic figs *will* bear fertile seeds and grow new, hitherto-untasted fig fruit phantasms, but only with the presence of a teeny little insect called the fig wasp. These tiny wasps enter the developing fruit, covered with pollen, and scurry around looking to lay eggs

Except in most of these varieties of figs, the flowers inside the fruit are shaped *the wrong way* for the female wasp to lay her eggs in (the wasp parasitizes the seed by laying an egg inside it) - so why is she there?

She is there because the fruit - which, it is helpful to think of it this way, is essentially a mulberry turned inside out - lured her there with a powerful scent, emitted for a short window of about 48 hrs.

Wait, where did the pollen come from???

GOOD QUESTION - if these varieties are all female and sterile, where *did* the pollen come from????

It comes from the 'male' tree of the species, known as a capri-fig: capri, as in 'goat.'

The male of the species bears *three* crops of fruit per year! Fruit and ALSO WASPS

Yoiks! The wasps are grown by the 'male' tree! The 'male' tree bears fruits that are mostly made up of male flowers *BUT ALSO* with some female flowers, female flowers that are shaped just right for the fig wasp to parasitize. The fig wasps develop in the fruit - in the seeds.

The male wasps hatch first and uh fertilize the female wasps. Then the female wasps mature and escape from the 'male' flower, covered in pollen, just in time to find the fruiting 'female' flowers of the cultivated varieties - and hey presto, you've got SEEDS THAT CAN GROW

and also SEEDS THAT CAN CRUNCH. Fig connoisseurs often state that pollinated fruits are superior in taste for this reason.

But what happened to our friend, the female wasp?

Well, she entered the fig and scurried around, spreading pollen...

... and also looking for female flowers to lay an egg on, to parasitize the seed - but (usually) these flowers are shaped the wrong way! Oops! She never did get to lay any eggs that will grow into new wasps :( and then she dies of old age. Then the fig digests her.

YUP

meanwhile, back at the ranch - by which, I mean the male capri-fig - new crops of fruit continue to grow and get more wasps and then it sets the winter 'mamme' crop. The 'mamme' crop is on the tree over the winter and is where the fig wasps also live during the winter.

Hilariously, 'mamme' means 'mother' on this 'male' tree, uff da.

Anyhow, I was daydreaming about a way to establish a colony of fig wasps here in western Washington, so that we also might be able to find new fig varieties here that would thrive in our, um, lower-heat summers.

*and yes, I do daydream at night, which precludes sleeping - it is a problem

suffice to say, fig fanciers are a collection of complete mad-women and -men. Serious. Mad respect.

It's now 6h00 or so, time to get some GIS work done while the servers aren't overheating and the children are still sleeping.