when did you get the memo that fig hybridization was possible?

[epiphyte]

on what day, exactly, did you learn that its possible for people to hybridize figs? how did you find out? how old were you?

recently i wrote a short essay about fig breeding for reddit. when i tried submitting it to the botany subreddit, it was automatically rejected because i didn't have enough "karma". in other words, i'm not popular enough on reddit, which is rather ironic.

here's my essay...

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Here's a very basic breakdown of how I crossed the common fig (Ficus carica) with the cluster fig (Ficus racemosa):

• Harvested nearly ripe male figs of Ficus carica
• Extracted the pollen and mixed it with water
• Used a syringe to inject the pollen water into receptive figs of Ficus racemosa (15 June 2025)
• Harvested ripe figs of Ficus racemosa (3 Aug 2025)
• Extracted the racemosa seeds
• Sowed the seeds (4 Aug 2025)

The seeds started germinating on 11 Aug. Pic of a seedling taken on 21 Aug 2025. Pic of the largest seedling taken on 31 March 2026.

Most of the seedlings quickly started showing signs of what I’m guessing is outbreeding depression. Ficus carica and Ficus racemosa are somewhat distantly related. They aren’t in the same subgenus and they have completely different sexual systems — Ficus carica is dioecious while Ficus racemosa is monoecious.

This is the 4th fig hybrid I’ve made. In the past couple years I’ve created 7 crosses with carica:

• Ficus opposita x carica
• Ficus fraseri x carica
• Ficus ulmifolia x carica
• Ficus racemosa x carica
• Ficus aspera x carica
• Ficus lutea x carica
• Ficus sycomorus x carica

The lutea cross was the worst. Out of 200 seeds I sowed, only 1 partially germinated and then died shortly after. No surprise there — Ficus lutea is in the subgenus Urostigma, which might be the most distant from Ficus carica. Sadly most of the commonly grown Ficus species (like Ficus elastica and benjamina) are in that subgenus. Maybe embryo rescue could work.

My goal is world domination. Oops, I meant my goal is to develop varieties of delicious figs that actually thrive in the tropics. Ficus carica comes from the Mediterranean and struggles with humidity, summer rain, and pests (especially root-knot nematodes). Hopefully some of these crosses will give us the best of both worlds. It’ll probably take a lot more breeding to create truly useful tropical varieties.

As Thomas Jefferson said,

"The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture."

For all his faults, he would have appreciated my fig hybrids more than all the other presidents combined.

Here’s the current breakdown of artificial fig hybrids by country:

USA: 8
Japan: 2
Israel: 1

It’s not a competition? I try to collaborate and be as transparent as possible about my methods, successes, and failures. But I can’t help seeing it as a competition too, because it’s funny when other people don’t even know they’re participating. Sorry if that doesn’t make any sense.

Every year the Chinese government spends around $10 billion on agriculture R&D. I spent $10 on some cheap syringes. Yet right now I’m beating the entire country of China in number of fig hybrids. Of course China doesn’t know we’re competing. Eventually they’ll get the memo, right? I’d actually love for them to get it sooner rather than later. With that kind of budget they could make a gazillion fig hybrids and beat the pants off me. Sure, I’d be a little sad to lose the lead, but mostly I’d be like a kid in a candy store drooling over all their crosses.

Hopefully you’re curious who made the other American fig hybrid. His name was Ira Condit. In 1950 he published a paper documenting the first ever artificial fig hybrid — a cross between Ficus carica and Ficus pumila. Sadly he didn’t win a Nobel Prize or anything. Did you know there’s no Nobel category for botany, agriculture, or horticulture? To make matters worse, his paper was barely cited. By the time he died in 1981 it had only been cited five times, and one of those was by his own other paper. To make matters even more worse, barely anybody wanted to buy his hybrid.

So virtually nobody got the memo that making fig hybrids was even possible.

I was born in 1978 and fell in love with Ficus early — especially banyans and constrictors (don’t call them stranglers). I had a pretty decent collection. For decades I assumed that crossing them was basically impossible because their flowers are completely inaccessible.

On 10 Sept 2020 I randomly walked into a local nursery (Lincoln Ave Nursery) and saw Condit’s cross for the first time. The label just said Ficus carica x pumila (should’ve been the other way around). I was shocked these two very different species could cross and figured some very confused wasp deserved credit. Over a year later I mentioned it to my friend Randy Baldwin, the encyclopedic manager at San Marcos Growers. On 29 Nov 2021 he told me the credit probably belonged to Ira Condit. A bit of quick digging proved him right.

So 29 Nov 2021 is when I finally got the memo — 43 years after I was born and 71 years after Condit wrote it.

For those of you formally taught in botany or related fields, I’m guessing you were never informed that artificial fig hybridization is possible? Please correct me if I’m wrong and spare no detail. When did you learn it and who taught you?

I grew up in Southern California, and Condit lived here from 1935 to 1981. In the three years that our lives overlapped, what’s the closest we ever got in miles? This is a reference to my favorite movie, Chungking Express:

“Every day we brush past so many other people. People we may never meet or people who may become close friends.”

Imagine the absurdity of Condit handing his 1950 paper to a toddler. In my case, that’s exactly what should have happened.

You’re not a toddler, but here I am handing you the memo. I’m guessing you have plenty of time to do something with it, but the chances are slim that you actually will. Still, unless you already had the memo (which seems unlikely), now you know it’s possible. Now you have the option to make fig hybrids. Of course it’s entirely up to you to judge the goodness of this option for yourself.

There are around 800 species of Ficus. Maybe half are too distantly related to carica for viable hybrids, but that still leaves a ton of possibilities. And what about crosses within the Urostigma subgenus? Could you cross a fiddle leaf fig with a rubber tree? Maybe not. Maybe yes. Nobody knows until some crazy person tries it. That crazy person could be you.

I’d be curious how many of you will actually read Condit’s 1950 paper. Let me know if you do. A problem for some will be the paywall. I hate paywalls so much.

The solution to paywalls is simple: we start ranking papers by donations. This is the most important memo you’ll ever receive, so I sincerely wish that I could properly convey its immense value. Chances are you’re a poor liberal college student and the idea of ranking papers by money rubs you the wrong way. But please think about our common ground — science. Feel free to hate my theory all you want, but I’m really hoping your love of science wins out and you at least test my theory, even if just to debunk it. If you test it, please carefully consider the challenge of dividing $10 among 100 papers you value. You won’t split the money evenly because you don’t value the papers equally. How you divide your money reveals your real priorities, and this is the most essential metadata that the world is severely lacking.

Big corporations can obviously outspend you by leaps and bounds. That doesn’t erase your input, or my input, or anyone’s.

Your theory is probably that everyone’s input should be weighed equally. So test both theories at the same time and compare the rankings. They won’t even be close. I’m betting you’ll agree that donations rank papers far more intelligently than citations or democracy, and then the important memos will reach everyone sooner rather than later. This is the big picture worth examining, if you truly care about progress. Right now progress is painfully slow. We’ve tried ranking papers with citations (democracy) and buying. Now its time to try donating.

How much would I donate to boost Condit’s 1950 paper? How badly do I want China to get the memo? These questions actually matter. Because I matter, and so does everyone else. Our differences are the source of all progress. Who we really are, our individual uniqueness, shows up in the sacrifices we’re willing to make for the ideas we care about.

"If a woman told us that she loved flowers, and we saw that she forgot to water them, we would not believe in her ‘love’ for flowers. Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love."
- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

If you like fig hybrids, sure, click the thumbs up or heart or whatever.

But if you truly love them — if you want more people to actually get the memo — then you and everyone else who really cares should have the option to pool your money and make it a lot harder for the world to keep overlooking it.

To learn more about fig hybridization, check out my posts in this fig forum and join my public Facebook group for fig hybridization.

Of course you’re welcome to comment below. Let’s make the best use of this overlap in our lives.

[Ghast]

Good read. I focused more on citrus breeding and had an interest in them since I was in middle school. Now, I want to say June of this year was my 1st time understanding that ficus species can be crossed (at 22 years old). I want to focus on making cold hardy ficus hybrids, that can survive 8b+. Back crossing tropical hybrids with carica ((tropical sp. x carica) x carica) will be the foundation.