Cultivation
The common fig is grown for its edible fruit throughout the temperate world. It is also grown as an ornamental tree, and the cultivar 'Brown Turkey' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Figs can be found in continental climates with hot summers as far north as Hungary and Moravia, and can be harvested up to four times per year. Thousands of cultivars, most named, have been developed as human migration brought the fig to many places outside its natural range.
Two crops of figs are potentially produced each year. The first or breva crop develops in the spring on last year's shoot growth. In contrast, the main fig crop develops on the current year's shoot growth and ripens in the late summer or fall. The main crop is generally superior in both quantity and quality to the breva crop. However, some cultivars produce good breva crops (e.g., 'Black Mission', 'Croisic', and 'Ventura').
There are basically three varieties of common figs:
- Caducous (or Smyrna) figs require pollination by the fig wasp with pollen from caprifigs to develop crops. Some cultivars are Calimyrna, Marabout, and Zidi.
- Persistent (or common) figs do not need pollination; fruit develop through parthenocarpic means. This is the variety of fig most commonly grown by home gardeners. Adriatic, Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Brunswick, and Celeste are some representative cultivars.
- Intermediate (or San Pedro) figs do not need pollination to set the breva crop, but do need pollination, at least in some regions, for the main crop. Examples are Lampeira, King, and San Pedro.
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—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)