Topic: Why Don't Figs Blossom?

[Emagggie]

A thought occured to me the other day, are there any other fruit trees like the fig that don't blossom first? Why don't they? 
I just wondered....

[non-stick]

A thought occured to me the other day, are there any other fruit trees like the fig that don't blossom first? Why don't they?  
I just wondered....

Great minds and all that - I was looking at my fig tree the other day and wondered the exact same thing

Edit - a quick google and found this


Common Fig Pollination
Fig species differ in pollination requirements. All fig trees have tiny blossoms inside the fruit. The tiny flowers of the fig are out of sight, clustered inside the green fruit, technically a synconium, a fleshy, hollow receptacle 1 to 4 inches long with a small hole at the apex. Tiny flowers mass on the inside wall. Pollinating insects enter the synconium through the opening to access the flowers. Common fig tree flowers are entirely female and do not require pollination to produce fruit

So there we are - they do flower but we can't see them

[realfood]

Or from my website:-
The common Fig has a long history of some 11,000 years, of being bred and cultivated in the Middle East. Probably, around that time, the early farmers noticed a chance genetic mutation which produced a self-pollinating female fig tree variety, which could only be propagated by rooting a shoot. In this all-female fig tree variety, the male flower parts do not develop. While we think of a fig as being a fruit, it is really a “false fruit”, as the flowers and the seeds have grown together to form a single mass where the embryonic flowers are actually inside the fruit. In most other fruits, such as apples, the flowers are outside the embryonic fruit. If it had not been for this chance mutation, we would not be able to grow figs in our climate, as the original figs had to be pollinated by a specific small wasp which had to crawl inside the fig to pollinate it.

[Emagggie]

Thanks both. I shall sleep tonight. ;D
Aint nature wonderful?

[artichoke]

"....as the original figs had to be pollinated by a specific small wasp which had to crawl inside the fig to pollinate it"

Yes, and her eggs hatch to produce winged females and wingless males. The males fertilise the females then die, while the female crawls out of the ostiole to move onto another fig and start again.

I had to illustrate all that for a book, and also got to look inside the more primitive figs that still grow in Omani deserts and wadis, and need the fig wasps to develop their fruit. I then realised that eating a ripe fig involved chewing a mouthful of fig wasps and their eggs, and was relieved to learn that modern figs do not admit or need wasps.