Bror Eric Dahlgren

“ Once in the open air their wings soon dry and each young female wasp is off in search of an immature fig in which to deposit eggs. A suitable one found, the wasp proceeds to cut a notch in one of the outer scales for better access, then makes its way inside. In the process the wasp generally loses its wings. These are apt to stick in the opening, so that an inhabitated fig may be recognized by their presence. The pollen carried by the insect is brushed off on the stigmas of the long-styled flowers within. ”

“ In African Sudan where the fig has failed to grow on its own roots, it has been grown budded on the more tropical sycamore fig.
The cultivated fig is ordinarily a rapidly growing small tree with palmately lobed leaves and with a soft 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 insects emerge from one crop of maturing Caprifigs they ordinarily find green fruit of the next crop ready to receive them. Each crop is thus pollinated with pollen of the preceding crop. An interval of about two months elapses between the entrance of the egg-laying fig wasp into the young fig and the emergence of her progeny from the ripe one. The same interval of time separates the receptive stage of the female fig flowers and the ripening of the pollen in the male flowers, completely excluding the possibility of self-pollination. ”

“ A few of them are cultivated or well-known plants, such as the rubber plant which in its normal habitat is a rubber yielding tree, the Banyan tree which with its numerous proproots may spread over an acre or more of ground, and the sycamore fig that furnished the everlasting wood for the coffins of the Pharaohs. The vast majority of figs, however, grow in semi-tropical and tropical forests and jungles as shrubs, trees, or even as vines. ”

“ It is grown in South and Southwest Africa, in South America, and in Australia. It has been grown in Sussex in England. It is successfully cultivated in the United States, especially in California and in the Gulf Region, particularly in Texas. ”