92 THE FIG: ITS HISTORY, CULTURE, AND CURING. 
four is the most constant number. In size the petals vary somewhat, 
one pair often being a little longer than the other, and all four are 
always longer than the petals of the male flowers. All are more or 
less fleshy, and sometimes they are furnished with short hairs at the 
margin. In the center, between these petals, projects a single pistil, 
enlarged at the base, forming the ovary. The central part is elon- 
gated two or three times more than the ovary. This part is the 
style. The upper part of the style is bent and funnel-shaped, often, 
or perhaps generally, divided, one projection of the stigma being 
longer than the other. With a high-magnifying lens the margin and 
upper surface of the stigma are seen to consist of a layer of minute 
glands, of a warty appearance, while from the center of the stigmatic 
funnel there extends downward a narrow canal or lumen, which passes 
through the whole length of the style and down through one side of 
the ovary, here bending upward and touching the very embryo. 
When the female flowers are receptive—that is, when they are in con- 
dition to receive the pollen from the male flowers—these glands become 
greatly swollen and somewhat glossy, of a green or light-green color, 
which, after the receptive stage is passed, changes to a bright brown. 
The inner surface of figs in such a stage is seen to be spotted brown 
when cut open. The stigma attains its receptivity long before the 
male flowers are ripe in the same fig receptacle. This difference in 
the maturity of the flowers makes it impossible for the female flowers 
to be fertilized or pollinated by the male fiowers of the same fig. 
Thus the female flowers of the mammoni can be pollinated only by 
the male flowers of the preceding crop—the profichi. 
The crops of the edible figs correspond in a general way with those 
of the caprifig. Thus when the male flowers of the profichi are ripe, 
and at a time when the other flowers in this fig had passed their 
prime months before, the female flowers of the second-crop Smyrna 
figs have just attained the state of receptivity. They can therefore 
be pollinated by the male flowers of the profichi of the caprifigs. The 
time for this pollination is June or July, according to climatic condi- 
tions, in various countries. This rule as to the difference in time of 
ripening of the male and female flowers in the caprifig holds also 
good in the few instances where male flowers have been found in the 
edible figs. Hence the impossibility of the female flowers in our 
edible fig being fertilized by the pollen of the male flowers immedi- 
ately above them. It is only the female flowers of the following crop 
that could thus be impregnated by the pollen. Female flowers occur 
in large numbers in the Smyrna varieties and in the first crop of such 
figs as the Adriatic, which do not mature this crop without caprification. 
THE GALL FLOWERS, 
The gall flowers, which occur in abundance in all eaprifigs of all 
crops, are in reality nothing else than female flowers which have been 
transformed in order to accommodate the requirements of a small 
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