16 BULLETIN 132, U. S, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Gasparrini (17) found 20 seeds in 40 mammoni figs and reached 

 the conclusion that not more than one flower in 2,000 is a perfect 

 female flower, all the others being gall flowers, incapable of fertili- 

 sation. The writer has found as many as 75 fertile seeds in one fig, 

 and from a large number of mammoni seeds plants have grown at 

 the United States Plant Introduction Garden, Chico, Cal. From 

 careful observations he has been forced to the conclusion that all 

 gall flowers are perfect female flowers and susceptible of pollination 

 and that most of them are pollinated, but if the Blastophaga deposits 

 an egg in the ovary the resulting larva prevents the development 

 of the ovule and no seed is formed. The seeds therefore found in 

 the mammoni figs are from those flowers in which the insect failed 

 to oviposit. 



SEEDS ACCOMPANIED BY SECRETION OF SUGAR. 



There seems to be some connection, not yet well understood, be- 

 tween the seed and the secretion of sugar and coloring matter. The 

 pedicels and floral envelopes of the seeds in mammoni figs are succu- 

 lent, sweet, and generally of a pink color, while all parts of the gall 

 flowers containing Blastophaga are white and quite dry, the difference 

 in appearance being so marked that the seeds can readily be picked 

 out with a pair of forceps from the mass of galls by their succulence 

 and pinkish color. 



CAPRIFICATION. 



The term caprification is derived from the word capri, the name 

 by which the male or pollen-bearing fig is known, and is applied to 

 the process of hanging the caprifigs in the Smyrna trees. The details 

 of the process are somewhat obscure and complicated, and it is not 

 strange that it is little understood by the public in general, though 

 known to the inhabitants of Asia Minor more than two thousand 

 years ago. Theophrastus, who wrote about 350 years before Christ, 

 describes the process as practiced at that time exactly as it is used 

 at the present day in this country. 



Undoubtedly the cultivated fig was originally a dioecious species 

 having about equal numbers of male and female trees. Through cen- 

 turies of culture, varieties of the female figs have been developed which 

 will produce fruit without caprification, but such figs never produce 

 fertile seeds. Figs of the Smyrna type absolutely require fertiliza- 

 tion to set fruit at all, and such fruits produce an abundance of fertile 

 seeds, which undoubtedly add to the flavor and quality of the dried 

 Smyrna figs. In orchard practice it is not necessary to have, as in 

 the state of nature, approximately one half of the trees male and 

 the other half female. One or two caprifig trees per acre of fig orch- 

 ard is stfincienl to supply an. abundance of caprifigs to fertilize the 

 whole orchard. 



