90 THE FIG: ITS HISTORY, CULTURE, AND CURING. 
from the anthers can not fertilize or pollinate the female flowers in 
the same fig. Their function is to pollinate the female flowers of the 
succeeding crop. Thus the pollen from the first crop or ‘‘ profichi” 
pollinates the ‘‘ mammoni” or second crop, the female flowers of which 
are in their prime and receptive at a time when the pollen of the 
profichi is ripe. The pollen in the profichi is very abundant, of a 
pale yellow color, resembling a flowery yellow powder, which may 
easily be taken out and collected without injury to its vital qualities. 
The above refers only to the caprifig, or, if we wish to be more dis- 
tinct, to the male tree of the caprifig. The edible fig, as cultivated 
in our orchards, does not possess any male flowers,' except in extremely 
rare cases, as will be mentioned below. (See fig. 10.) 
‘The anthers in the male flowers are not always properly developed. 
This is especially the case in seedlings raised from Smyrna fig seeds, 
which originated from a pollination with the caprifig. Such seedlings 
do not all possess male flowers; those that do are more or less similar 
i 
c 
FIG. 10.—Seedling fig raised by the author from caprificated Smyrna figs: a, fig cut in half, 
showing interior cavity with male and gall flowers; b, male flower; c, gall flower; d,e, stamens 
with anthers. 
to the caprifig flowers, the anthers frequently being as well developed 
as in the real wild fig.” 
FEMALE FLOWERS, 
In the caprifig, female flowers have been found with certainty only 
in the second cropor mammoni. In this crop alone have fertile seeds 
been found, but always in very small quantities, hardly more than 
one fertile seed in every fig.* In the edible figs perfect female flowers 
capable of producing developed embryos are more common. Gen- 
erally it has been supposed that all flowers found in the edible figs 
1 As will be seen in a different place, so far only avery few exceptions have been 
noted, among them the Cordelia fig in Solano County, Cal., and the Croisic fig, 
growing at the mouth of the Loire River in France. See Solms-Laubach, I, p. 14. 
?French authors generally describe the caprifig male flowers as having only 
three petals, which is an error, undoubtedly originated by describing the figure in 
‘*De Breuil,” where the figure of the male flower is erroneously drawn. 
’Solms-Laubach, 1, p. 11, found only twenty fertile seeds in forty caprifigs (mam- 
moni). Gasparrini, I, p. 328, 
