The fruit of the fig is green, purple or bluish and of variable size. It requires a temperate climate and does not tolerate low temperatures, although it can withstand long periods of drought.
Some cultivated fig trees produce two crops of figs, one of figs in spring, larger in size, and another of figs in autumn.
The fruits can be eaten raw or dried. In the Alpujarra area "fig bread" is made.
A fig contains many calories and is easy to digest.
The figs soothe the nervous strength, the must, cooked in arrope, promotes digestion, evacuates the stomach and is recommended for urinary bladder disorders.
The first fruit of the fig tree produced in late spring is called breva. Its thin skin and flavor is similar to that of figs, although they are not as sweet as figs.
The fig, contrary to popular belief, is not a fruit.
It is a fleshy receptacle called 'syconium' in the shape of a pear that supports the male and female flowers that give rise to small fruits called 'achenes' that we commonly call pips. It is therefore an infructescence.
The fleshy and sweet part of the fig or syconium corresponds to the flowers that after fertilization swell and become fleshy.
There are berry or flowering fig trees that give two harvests a year.
A first one, at the beginning of summer (the figs); and another one, around October, the real figs.
Other fig trees only bear figs and are not re-flowering.
There are also monoecious fig trees that produce male and female flowers on the same tree and therefore do not usually need fertilizing devices.
But there are other fig trees, dioecious, in which the female flowers are on one tree and the male flowers (cabrahígos) on others.
Fecundation (which may not be necessary) is achieved by bringing cabrahígos branches close to the branches with female flowers.
A small insect, called a "blastóphage", passes from the male flowers and fertilizes, with the pollen attached to its body, the female flowers.
In any case, there are female flowers that develop parthenocarpically.
All these complex mechanisms allowed the Bible to speak of the "cursed fig tree", which refused to bear fruit.
There are, therefore, fig trees that do not bear figs unless the female flowers have been fertilized by insects (Blastofaga psenes) with pollen from wild fig trees; if there are no goats nearby, bunches of male figs from other fig trees are hung on their branches.
Other fig trees, including those currently in cultivation, do not need such a contribution.
It can be said that the trees with female flowers produce edible fruit and those with male and female flowers produce the reproduction of the fig plague (Blastofaga psenes), which pollinates the others.
Three generations of inflorescences are found on the same tree.
The summer ones produce the figs, the spring ones are used for pollination, and the winter ones are used for fig reproduction.
It has two fructifications: the first one is the heathers, which are born in winter, in the axils of the leaves.
Culture of figs or heathers
It resists long periods of drought.
Sensitive to frost.
It prefers dry and poor soils and has a high fruit production.
