132 [ THE FIG TREE 



known by all cultivators of the fig tree to allow it to fall 

 into disuse. The following is a summary of the informa- 

 tion necessary to understand the practice. 



The so-called "fruit" or syconium of the fig tree 

 consists of a pear-shaped receptacle, bearing the flowers 

 along the inner surface, the orifice at the extremity being 

 protected by small semicircular scales, by which 

 as a rule it is closed up almost entirely, except at 

 the time when the flowers are ripe for pollination and 

 again at the time when the fruit approaches maturity. 

 The flowers situated near the orifice are male or pollinife- 

 rous, but may be more or less neutral. The other 

 flowers covering three-fourths or more of the entire 

 cavity are female or pistilliferous, but in some varieties 

 may be mixed up in varying proportion with the male 

 flowers all over the cavity. The structure of the flowers 

 as is the case with many species of the order Urticaceae 

 to which the fig tree belongs, is of the simplest type. 

 The male flower consists of one or two, rarely six, 

 stamens supported by two or three small ciliated leafy 

 scales upon a short peduncle. The female flower consists 

 of a unilocular ovary, containing only one ovule, and 

 supported on a short filamentous stalk, which in the 

 common fig becomes fleshy when ripe. The female 

 flowers are of two sorts, or rather may be perfect flowers 

 more or less uniformly mixed up with imperfect ones. 

 The perfect female flower has a long well-developed 

 stigma, and in due course its ovule becomes a seed ; but 

 the imperfect flowers have a short and abortive stigma, 

 unsuitable for the reception of the pollen and for the 

 formation of the pollen tubes, and are therefore incapable 

 of producing seed. In the process of caprification these 

 imperfect flowers become galls, and hence are called 

 gall -flowers. 



The fertilizing agent is a small winged insect, 

 Blastophaga grosser um of the order Hymenoptera, not 

 larger than a sand-fly, which comes out of the orifice of 



