Choosing a variety

There are more named fig varieties than anyone has counted, and a good share of them are the same fig wearing different names — Black Mission is also Franciscana, and DNA work keeps merging "different" varieties into one. So don't chase names. Chase a match between the fig and your climate, then between the fig and your mouth.

Start with your climate

• Coastal and foggy (the Bay Area, the coast, the Northwest): you need figs that ripen early, or a strong breba crop. Look for early ripening windows, a closed eye against the damp, and varieties known to ripen in cool summers.
• Hot inland (the Central Valley, inland Southern California, the Southwest): almost anything ripens. This is where the dark, late, intensely flavoured figs shine, and where you can grow the collectors' varieties that tease everyone else.
• Cold winters (zone 7 and below): most figs are root-hardy to about 10°F and will regrow from the base even when the top dies. In zones 5–6, grow in a pot you can drag into a garage, or wrap the tree. Celeste, Chicago Hardy and Brown Turkey are the classics for a reason.
• Humid summers (the South, the East Coast): rain in the eye sours a fig from the inside. A tight, closed eye and resistance to splitting matter more than anything else here.

Then pick a flavour family

Growers use a rough shorthand for what a fig tastes like, and it's more useful than any description of colour:

• Honey or sugar figs — often yellow or green-skinned with amber pulp. Clean, sweet, sometimes with a melon or honey note. The classic dried-fig flavour.
• Berry figs — dark skins, red pulp, a jammy depth. Mission types live here.
• Adriatic or "complex berry" — green skin over a shocking strawberry-red pulp. Bright, acidic, jam-and-lemon. Many people's favourite once they've tasted one.
• Figgy or caramel — earthy, brown-sugar, sometimes nutty. Harder to describe, easy to recognise.

What the fields on a variety page mean

• Ripens — the months the main crop comes in, here in California. Add a few weeks in a cooler climate; subtract a few in a hotter one.
• Hardiness — the USDA zones the tree survives winter in. The lower number is the one that matters. It's about roots surviving, not fruit ripening: a fig hardy to zone 7 will live in zone 7 but may not ripen there without a warm summer.
• Fruit and pulp colour — the skin is fashion; the pulp is flavour. Red pulp leans berry; amber leans honey.
• Breba crop — whether it fruits on old wood in early summer. Essential in a short season, a bonus in a long one. Why, here.
• Cutting or tree — a cutting is cheap, ships flat, and roots in weeks; a tree is a year ahead. Both end up the same tree.