TWENTY-SIXTH SESSION. 
27 
THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE CAPRIFIG EXPERIMENTS IN 
CALIFORNIA. 
BY DR. L. O. HOWARD, ENTOMOLOGIST, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
As late as 1895 a writter in Garden and Forest (June 26) gave expression 
to the following statements, which appear to accurately sum up California 
conditions with regard to the fig crop down to the present season: 
“As a commercial factor the fig has been of little importance among Cali- 
fornia fruits, although it has been an incumbent of almost every rancher’s 
door yard since the Padres taught their Indian peons horticulture. As a 
fresh fruit it is luscious and invaluable for its medical qualities. Eaten with 
sugar and cream, it is as grateful for dessert as the strawberry, and more 
wholesome; but it is good only wTien perfectly ripe. It will not bear trans- 
portation under existing conditions, and the fresh figs offered in eastern 
markets are a delusion and a snare. As a dried fruit it has also been a 
failure in the market. Quantities of dried figs are sold in California, although 
they are usually small and shriveled in appearance and lack the rich aromatic 
nutty flavor of the imported fig. The latter commands in California, as 
everywhere, a high price, usually 25 cents per pound. The home product 
sells at 10 cents. It has been the dream of fig culturists for years so to 
improve the quality that the California fruit may compete with the imported. 
To this end soils, climates, and varieties have been patiently studied.” 
What this says of California may also be said regarding our Southern 
States, except that the energetic attempts of Californians to improve the 
output have not been elsewhere emulated. It is now a generally accepted 
fact that the Smyrna fig, the fig of commerce, owes its peculiar flavor to the 
number of ripe seeds which it contains, and since the days of Pliny and 
Plutarch it has been known that in the Oriental regions it has been the 
custom of the natives to break off branches of the wild or caprifig, bring 
them to the edible fig, and tie them to its limbs. From the caprifigs thus 
brought in there issues a minute insect which crawls into the flowers of the 
edible fig and fertilizes them, thus producing a crop of seeds and bringing 
about the subsequent ripening of the fruit. The careful investigations of 
Count Solms-Laubach and Fritz Muller in the early eighties, and later those 
of Dr. Paul Mayr have shown that the varieties of the wild or caprifig are the 
only ones which contain male organs, while the varieties of the Smyrna fig 
are exclusively female. In the caprifig there exists three crops of fruit, the 
first known as “profichi,” the second as “mammoni,” and the third as 
“mamme,” the latter remaining upon the trees through the winter. The fig 
insects (the Oriental species being known as Blastophaga grossorum Graven- 
horst) over-winter in the mamme, oviposit in the profichi, develop a generation 
within it, each individual living in the swelling of a gall flower (a modified 
and infertile female flower), and issue from it covered with pollen, from 
which they make vain efforts to relieve themselves, enter the young flower 
receptacles of the Smyrna fig, which are at that time of the proper size, and 
make an attempt to oviposit in the true female flowers, fertilizing them at the 
same time by means of the pollen adhering to their bodies, and thus bringing 
about an extensive production of seed. The life history of the insect from 
that time on is not well understood. Even Paul Mayr has failed to discover 
