MULBERRY: CELTIS: FIG. 



district was full of Fig trees, so much so that it was 

 called after them. But as one drives through that 

 part of the country, one sees no greater number of 

 Fig trees than there are elsewhere. Perhaps when 

 this early book was written, the tree was still scarce 

 in other parts of the Eiviera, and was gradually 

 spreading from certain centres of which this was one. 



In the Vallecrosia Valley, between Ventimiglia 

 and Bordighera, Figs were once so plentiful as to 

 form an important source of revenue. Thus the 

 village of Soldano had its " Book of Figs " in which 

 an account was kept of the Figs sold or lent from the 

 the public store. The refuse fruit remaining was 

 given to the poor. This district still possesses Fig 

 trees of great size, and the small sweet black fruits 

 are sold at the rate of twenty or thirty for a penny. 

 (Scott, " Rock Villages of the Riviera.") 



The text-books teach us that Ficus has the 

 staminate and pistillate flowers on the same plant, 

 the former being at the entrance of the fruit, the 

 latter, much more numerous, lining the cavity. 

 But it appears from a paper by Dr. G. King in 

 the Journal of the Linnean Society for June, 

 1887, that the tree is really dioecious : in other 

 words (if I understand him) the staminate flowers 

 in the cultivated Fig are barren. Thus the 

 "common eatable Fig" is pistillate, whereas the 

 Caprifig, which is, as Linnaeus supposed, the staminate 

 plant of the same species, has both staminate 

 flowers and also the so-called "gall flowers." The 

 different plants have the same leaf, but the 

 receptacle of the Caprifig is globular, not elongate. 

 The Caprifig grows wild on the Riviera, though 



