THE MONTHLY BULLETIN 



CALIFORNIA STATE COMMISSION OF HORTICULTURE 



^ ol. IV. February, 1915. No. 2. 



REQUIREMENTS AND POSSIBILITIES OF FIG CULTURE 



IN CALIFORNIA. 



By G. P. RixFORD,* U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



The fig family. Moracece, is one of the largest in the vegetable world. 

 Botanists have identified and described more than 600 species, mostly 

 tropical evergreens, frecpiently of gigantic size, often climbers or 

 parasitic. Very few of the species produce edible fruits, but many 

 yield other useful products ; one of them, Ficus elastica, is an important 

 rubber producer. 



Some of the tropical forms are of enormous size. Frazer speaks of 

 specimens at Morton Bay, Australia, 150 feet high enclosing immense 

 iron-bark trees on which the seeds of thg fig trees had been deposited 

 by birds. Here they had vegetated and thrown out their parasitical 

 and rapacious roots, whicli. adhering close to the bark of the iron-tree, 

 had followed the course of the stem downward to the earth, where, having 

 arrived, their progress and growth were truly astonishing. The roots 

 increase rapidly in number, enveloping the host and sending out such 

 gigantic branches that it is not unusual to see the original tree at 

 a height of seventy or eighty feet, peeping through the fig foliage as 

 if it were a parasite on the real intruder. 



I have seen such instances in the tropical forests of Central America, 

 where the original tree had been strangled to death by the parasite and 

 where, with heat and dampness, decay is rapid; in a few years the 

 original tree had rotted away leaving the fig as a gigantic hollow 

 cylinder five or six feet in diameter and a hundred feet high. 



Among the 160 known species in Africa are some curious forms. 

 One produces its edible fruit on short sprouts from the roots and not 

 in the top of the tree where we are accustomed to look for most kinds 

 of fruit. Another interesting form Ficus roxbiirghii, inhabits the 

 slopes of the Himalaya mountains in northern India up to six thousand 

 feet, and is therefore likely to be hardy in California. The tree is 

 small or medium-sized, but the fruit is very large, turbinate in form and 

 2 to 3J inches in diameter, russet brown or purple Avlien ripe, edible, 

 and produced often in immense clusters upon short leafless branches 

 from the trunk, often near the ground. Steps have been taken for its 

 introduction by the Federal Department of Agriculture. 



ORIGINAL HOME OF THE CULTIVATED FIG. 

 The original home of the cultivated fig, Ficus carica, conforms closely 

 to that of the olive. De Candolle sums it up in a few words as follows : 

 The result of our inquiry shows, then, that the prehistoric area of the 



*Address before the State Fruit Growers' Convention, Davis, California, June 1 

 to 6, 1914. 



I.">ri27 



