Page:Figs by Dahlgren, B. E. (Bror Eric).djvu/11

Rh wood. It lives sometimes to a great age and then reaches large dimensions. It may be uncommonly productive and is said to bear at times a fruit in every leaf-axil, though part of such a huge crop is apt to drop before maturity.

As in the case of most cultivated fruits there are many varieties. Besides the common fig, called mission figs in California, and the well-known Smyrnas, a California writer lists Adriatic, Eriocyne, Cordelia, and San Pedro figs. The popular distinction into two kinds is on the basis of color, purple or "black" figs and yellow or "white" figs. The former are usually less sweet and are consumed while fresh. The figs which come dried and packed in boxes or "drums," such as the imported Smyrna figs, are of the white variety. They are preserved like raisins or dates by their own high sugar content.

The fig fruit is a hollow, fleshy receptacle, with a small opening or "eye" in the top furnishing the only point of entry to the interior cavity. Ordinarily this opening is almost entirely closed and barred on the inside by a zone of small, interlocking scales. The inner wall of the receptacle bears the very numerous, small, simple flowers which in the edible fig are all of the female or pistillate kind, more or less perfect. As these grow old and elongate, they completely fill the cavity. Each one of them normally matures a single small dry seed which in some cultivated figs is always sterile, in others fertile when the flowers have been pollinated. The fruit of some varieties of the cultivated fig "ripens," i. e., the receptacle becomes soft, fleshy and edible, without pollination. The fruit of others will not ripen unless pollinated.

Pollination is a normal occurrence in the wild fig only. This, in contrast to the edible fig (Ficus) bears partly inedible fruit and is known as the goats-fig-tree,