Flowers in Israel: Ficus carica, Edible fig, Common fig (Hebrew name: תאנה (Te’enah)

Ficus carica,

Edible fig, Common fig (Hebrew name: תאנה (Te’enah)

“It is a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil, and [date] honey”. Deuteronomy 8, 8

The first tree to be mentioned by name in the Bible is the fig (Genesis 3:7), in the story of Adam and Eve: “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”

The Ficus carica was cultivated for its fruit some 6500 years ago. It is a dioecious species with separate male and female trees, and a symbiotic pollinator wasp (Blastophaga psenes) that is propagated inside the fruits (syconia) of male trees called capri figs. Pollination of edible figs requires fig wasps to transport pollen from Capri fig flowers. The Ficus carica is native to the region between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Evidently many ancient civilizations were aware of the fact that Ficus carica required pollination in order to produce edible, seed-bearing fruits, a process called caprification.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) described fig wasps that came out of Capri figs and penetrated the unripe female fig fruits, thus fertilizing them.

Theophrastus of Eresos (371-287 BCE) was essentially the first botanical taxonomist and some 2,300 years ago he described in details on fig caprification. In order to prevent the abortion of their embryo cultivar figs, the farmers arranged that ripe wild figs were hung in orchards of the cultivars at embryo stage, or even went so far as to interplant the early, intermediate and late cultivars (you get three crops per annum in the Mediterranean) with the appropriate wild variety. They were aware of the galls which develop in the inedible or goat-fig and were aware of the insect which came out of the ripe fruit and entered the embryo fruit, allowing it to develop to an edible fig. The flower of a fig of course, is very unusual in that it is completely enclosed within the fig itself and never seen, male flowers at the top and female below. It is fertilised by a tiny wasp which leaves the ripe fig and enters the embryo fig via a minute hole at the top, which is hidden by overlapping scales. Each species of fig has developed a symbiosis with a different wasp over the last 100 million years. The fruits are eaten fresh or dried, sometimes candied and they have a laxative effect. The ancient Egyptians used the figs in remedies to treat the heart.

Plato (427 BCE-347 BCE), called figs a food for athletes. The Greeks were well aware of the fig’s value and forbade its export in order to protect Attica’s main resource, “more precious than gold.”

Pliny (23–79 CE), states that homegrown Figs formed a large portion of the food of slaves, especially in the fresh state for agricultural workers.
Dioscorides (40 – 90 CE), a Greek physician who traveled as a surgeon with the armies of the Roman emperor Nero, compiled De Materia Medica around 77 CE. De Materia Medica was the foremost classical source of modern botanical terminology and the leading pharmacological text until the 15th century. He stated how milk clotted with the sap of the fig tree. Fig juice made milk coagulate in the manner of rennet.