The Incredible Fig
nautil.us
nautil.us
Figs have an incredibly rich history and present - they were apparently one of the first plants cultivated by humans and they have followed peoples' migration across the planet (largely through the magic that is vegetative propagation). I've found the communities that exist to collect, share, and preserve different varieties (there are hundreds, at least) and their stories quite friendly and welcoming. [0][1]
They are also a surprisingly delicious fruit when fresh and ripe but, unlike many other fruits or vegetables, fresh ripe figs are almost always acquired somewhere locally - a tree in a backyard, a local farmer's market, a friend who grew more than they know what to do with. They are very soft when ripe and mostly spoil too quickly to survive modern shipping.
This past summer, a number of fig-related threads in my life came together and I became very interested in figs. I found a number of trees in my neighborhood in Brooklyn which I'm documenting. I've been collecting[2] and propagating cuttings to grow and give to friends, and I'm learning how to grow and care for them in colder climates.
If you haven't tried fresh figs from someplace other than a grocery store or restaurant, I highly suggest looking for them at your local farmer's market some time between late July and early October (in the Northern hemisphere), or get your hands on a tree and try growing some yourself :).
I just wanted to chime in and say that it's not important, at least not for the vast majority of vegans or others following vegan diets.
Most of us are aware that plant foods are not without consequence to animals (e.g. there are likely some ground-up insects in flours). Veganism is more about not willingly/knowingly exploiting or violating the consent of animals, rather than achieving a perfect diet free of even the smallest animal inputs. Even if the latter was the driving force behind a vegan diet, I don't really see the difference between how a fig is pollinated and a tree absorbing nutrients from the decomposing corpses of dead animals buried nearby.
I suppose fig farming may include the farming of wasps to ensure pollination or something, which is perhaps the actual reason behind your comment. Stuff like that is a topic that most vegans don't seem to dive into, just as most don't research to see if their produce was grown with manure instead of synthetic fertilizers. I suppose that if that's the method used for growing figs, then it may get on people's radars one of these days (along with other plants which I know are farmed in a similar fashion), but at least for the moment, we have bigger tofu to fry.
A person basically can't live in the modern world without destroying animals.
Although I do admire vegans who do it to try to make a difference there.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536480/
Watch on dailymotion https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x68r4b5
I think the tree I have is a ficus carica. I could be wrong. Lovely purple figs.
The way I eat them is by pulling them apart first. In my whole life I've never seen a wasp inside. So if one did get stuck in there, clearly the fig is just absorbing it out of existence anyway.
Switched to using bubble wrap and black plastic to wrap the trees this year. Went so so much faster and easier than any other method I’ve tried.
What technique do you like for winterizing?
It’s pretty common in Brooklyn NYC to see fig trees wrapped in tar paper.
"...although the word “fruit” is deceptive because figs are anatomically not really fruits but a cluster of hundreds of flowers enclosed in a smooth skin."
Figs are a fruit. It's basically the definition of a fruit. If you want to say figs aren't fruits because they're made up of multiple flowers, then what are mulberries? Pineapples? Breadfruit?
I've definitely heard it as a tongue-in-cheek thing the way arborists complain about palm trees and call them "glorified grasses". That actually makes more sense to me though, as they're monocots.
-They're not fruit.
-What are they?
-They're a multiple fruit.
I'm not sure when it would be helpful to only consider fruits as coming from the ovary. There's other words for that and I don't understand why some like to define fruit in that way. Is there maybe a historical reason for it?
Edit: Wrote that they were aggregate fruits for some reason. Changed it to multiple fruits.
Also, did I really misspell "meet" as "meat" in my other comment? Ugh.
Kadota: doesn't need pollinating
Brown Turkey: doesn't need pollinating
Black Mission: doesn't need pollinating
Adriatic: doesn't need pollinating
Calimyrna: must be pollinated by a wasp
So in conclusion it is unlikely that if you pick a random fig from the supermarket that it was pollinated by a wasp.
It was many years later when I discussed this with a friend who was telling me how wonderful his fresh figs were, and found that there was no peppery itching in his experience of figs. And came to the conclusion that I most likely have a mild fig allergy. It doesn't make them dangerous to me, just unpleasant; unless maybe I ate 100 figs, and there's no chance of that.
I still don't like them. De gustibus non disputandum est.
That sounds like an allergic reaction. Anaphylaxis ranges in severity from minor discomfort to life threatening. The reaction depends on the sensitivity of the person, the triggering substance, and the amount of the substance they came in contact with
Friend was one of those enthusiastic "go on, they're so fresh, try it you'll like it!" guys.
So I said: "all right then. Nope, still tastes like figs do"
Q: "What do you mean?"
A: "you know, all peppery and rough. Figs."
Q: "uh, what?"
A: "Figs are peppery, itchy, right? Right?"
"Nnnoo. It might be just you."
I don't have a serious reaction. I still don't like figs though.
I know one person that is allergic to chocolate, as well as to "Christmas trees" (don't know whether it's all pines or only some pines). Other than that, all the food allergy cases I know of fall into the common categories - dairy, poultry, shellfish, nuts/legumes...
Now that I think about it, I have to wonder if the "soapy" cilantro phenomenon is a mild allergy. But that's also correlated to the "supertaster" phenomenon.
Sensory phenomena are fascinatingly complex.
A reaction to that is quite common
I'm surprised by this sentence. At least Northern Rātā, and I'm sure other epiphyte species, do this.
I happen to like them all ways, especially grilled, finished either with or without sugar by a blowtorch, or with goats curd and prosciutto, or simply torn through salad or on my brekkie cereal.
Keep you regular too...
(After reading the article, I guess because of the wasps. But I thought the idea of veganism was to not harm any sentient creature, not to avoid consuming the biomass of any once-sentient creature. Otherwise, surely all plant life on earth, as one way or another fertilised by once-sentient biomass, would be off-limits!)
If some are taking it this far, would they be opposed to eating apples from a tree that was fertilized by the remnants of a decomposed animal?