The fig glossary

Fig people talk in a dialect. It's not hard, but it is specific, and a variety description can be impenetrable until you know what "closed eye, breba-bearing, Adriatic type" is telling you. Here's the dictionary.

Syconium

What a fig actually is: a hollow, swollen stem tip lined on the inside with hundreds of tiny flowers. The "fruit" is a flower cluster turned inside out.

Ostiole

The small opening at the bottom of the fig — the "eye". The only way in for a wasp, and for rain. A tight or closed eye is prized in humid climates.

Eye

The everyday word for the ostiole. "Closed eye" and "open eye" describe how tight it is.

Neck

The narrow stalk-like section between the fruit and the branch. When it softens and the fig droops, the fig is ripe.

Breba

The early crop, borne on last year's wood and ripening in early summer. From the Spanish breva. Not every variety carries one.

Main crop

The principal harvest, borne on the current season's growth and ripening late summer into autumn.

Common fig

A fig that sets fruit without pollination — the type nearly everyone grows and the type of every variety we sell.

Smyrna fig

A fig that must be pollinated by the fig wasp to ripen any fruit at all. Calimyrna is the famous one.

San Pedro fig

A fig whose breba crop sets without pollination but whose main crop needs the wasp. Desert King is the best-known.

Caprifig

The wild, pollen-bearing fig that houses the fig wasp. Its fruit is mostly inedible. "Goat fig", from the Latin.

Parthenocarpic

Setting fruit without fertilisation. Greek for "virgin fruit". It's what makes a common fig common.

Caprification

Hanging caprifigs in Smyrna fig trees in June so the wasps inside pollinate the crop. Farming with insects.

Profichi, mammoni, mamme

The caprifig's three yearly crops: spring (the pollen crop), late summer, and the small overwintering figs that keep the wasp alive.

Blastophaga psenes

The fig wasp. Two millimetres long, pollinates Ficus carica and nothing else.

Ficin

The protein-digesting enzyme in fig latex. Dissolves the wasp inside a pollinated fig, tenderises meat, and burns skin in sunlight.

Latex

The milky sap a fig bleeds when cut. Wear gloves.

Adriatic type

Growers' shorthand for green-skinned figs with bright strawberry-red pulp and a jam-and-lemon flavour.

Honey drop

A bead of syrup that appears at the eye of some figs as they ripen. A good sign.

Hardwood cutting

A length of mature wood taken for rooting — classically in winter, when the tree is dormant and bare.

Air layer

Rooting a branch while it's still on the tree by wounding it and wrapping the wound in damp moss.

Node

The slight ring on a stem where a leaf grew. Roots emerge from nodes, so a cutting needs several buried.

Cambium

The thin green layer of living tissue just under the bark. Scrape it off when air layering, or the wound heals over.

Hardiness zone

The USDA map of average winter minimum temperatures. A fig hardy to zone 7 survives winters down to about 0°F (−18°C).

Fig mosaic virus

A near-universal virus that mottles fig leaves. Cosmetic, incurable, harmless. Every fig collector's tree has it.