THE FIG. 31 



4. Mule flowers, also imperfect female flowers, which can 

 neither perfect seed, shelter the Blastophaga, nor perform any other 

 function. 



The caprifig, or wild fig, bears all the kinds of flowers except 

 mule flowers. It is the only fig having male flowers; it alone has 

 gall flowers. Its stamens furnish the pollen absolutely essential in 

 fecundating the Smyrna fig; and its gall flowers afford a breeding 

 place for the Blastophaga, the sole agency by which the pollen can 

 be transferred out of the caprifig and into the Smyrna fig. The pro- 

 cess of pollination by means of the fig-wasp is called caprification. 



The Smyrna fig has only female flowers. Were it not for the 

 caprifig with its pollen producing flowers, and the Blastophaga, 

 which is bred in it for the exclusive purpose of carrying that pollen 

 to the pistillate blossoms of the Smyrna fig, the latter would be abso- 

 lutely worthless. It would mature neither fruit nor seed. 



Domesticated figs, comprising the hundreds of varieties so widely 

 distributed throughout Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, the South of 

 England and the Pacific Slope and Gulf States of the United States, 

 and which supply the naturally edible fig, so long utilized by man, do 

 not require caprification like the Smyrna fig; they mature their fruit 

 regularly without pollination. 



The interdependence of the Smyrna fig and the caprifig upon the 

 instinctive act of the Blastophaga affords one of the most interesting 

 examples of the wonderful way Nature accomplishes her ends. 



According to a high authority, the Semitic name for fig means 

 "the tree near which another tree is planted, or joined." This defini- 

 tion is not self-explanatory, but will be readily understood when the 

 wonderful and very interesting method is described by which figs 

 are pollinated through the instrumentality of a minute insect whose 

 sole mission in life is to accomplish this act. Flowers of opposite 

 sex are often borne on different parts of the same plant, or tree, often 

 on different plants or trees ; and the important part played by insects 

 in transferring the dust-like particles of pollen from the male or 

 staminate blossoms to the female or pistillate ones, and thus fecun- 

 dating the latter, which otherwise would never mature fruit or seed, 

 is well known, but it is doubtful whether in the whole range of 

 natural economy there is such a remarkable illustration of this as in 

 the case of the fig. 



Caprification is described as follows by Prof. Hugh N. Starnes 

 of the Georgia Experiment Station : 



"In the base or false ovary of the gall flowers, which are merely 

 degenerate pistillates, the egg of the Blastophaga grossorum or "Fig 

 wasp' — a minute insect — is deposited and develops to maturity. The 

 wingless males emerge first and, with their powerful mandibles, cut 

 into the flowers containing the female wasps, partially release them and 

 impregnate them. The gravid females shortly complete the liberating 

 process and, being winged, at once seek to escape for the instinctive 

 purpose of laying their eggs. They emerge from the eye of the caprifig 

 after squeezing through the mass of pollen-covered anthers protectmg 

 the exit, and seek other fruit in which to lay their eggs. Naturally they 

 would enter the nearest caprifig in the proper stage of development. 

 But meanwhile if the caprifig containing the colony has been plucked 

 from its stem and suspended in the branches of an adjacent Smyrna tree, 

 the female, on emerging, forces her way in a fruit of the latter class, 

 losing her wings in the process, and at once begins a frantic scramble 

 around the interior, searching for the anticipated gall flowers in which 

 to deposit her eggs. Failing, necessarily, to find them, and Incapable of 



