6 BULLETIN 732, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
permits. The culture of Smyrna figs on the contrary necessitates the 
simultaneous culture of caprifigs which harbor the fig insect and 
bear the pollen necessary to fertilize figs of the Smyrna type. 
The fig is not a fruit in the sense in which we regard the apple, 
peach, etc., but is what is known to botanists as a receptacle, upon 
the inner surface of which are arranged hundreds of unisexual flow- 
ers. At the apex of the receptacle is an opening called the eye, 
which in the young fruit is closed by a number of scales or imbricated 
bracts. The blossoms are 
therefore effectually cut 
off from the outer world, 
and as the female flowers 
can not be supplied with 
pollen by the wind and 
can not pollinate them- 
selves, dependence must 
be had on the fig insect 
(Blastophaga psenes). 
CROPS OF THE FIG TREE. 
All of the female fig 
trees, both of the Smyrna 
class, the fruit of which 
never matures without 
pollination, and most of 
the other large class, 
which does not require 
pollination, have two 
well-defined crops. The 
first pushes from the old 
wood and appears in 
| spring, ripening in July 
= ———— and August. In Spam 
Fic. 2.—Mature mamme (winter) and young profichi (spring) these fruits are called 
caprifigs. The mamme figsare thelargerones. (Nearly one- brebas and in France 
half natural size.) fs Route = figues D été. 
The next, which is the main crop, called in Spain higos and in France 
figues d’automne, springs from the axils of the leaves of the new wood 
and ripens in summer and fall. 
The male or caprifig tree has two well-defined crops and a third 
which is in doubt by some authorities (figs. 2and3). To these for 
convenience the Neapolitan names proficht (spring crop), mammont 
(summer crop), and mamme (winter crop) have been applied. The 
mamme crop forms in autumn on the wood of the current season , 
and the Blastophaga from the preceding mammoni oviposits in 
