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a couple days ago here in socal i harvested a ripe fig from my ficus opposita in a 5 gallon pot...
this species is a small, mostly evergreen tree from australia where it is commonly known as the sweet sandpaper fig. the leaves are very rough and the small figs are sweet. mine tastes a bit like kiwi, but admittedly i’ve never eaten one in its entirety, even though i’ve harvested around a dozen or so ripe figs since the summer of 2024.
the wasp that naturally pollinates ficus opposita isn’t present here in california, and my particular variety isn’t parthenocarpic. so the only reason any of my figs ripen is because i manually pollinate them. it’s not that difficult. i harvest pollen from male figs of ficus carica, mix it with water, suck it up into a syringe, and inject the pollen water into the figs of opposita. naturally i’d very much rather sow the seeds than eat them, which is what i’ve been doing.
in the past couple years i’ve made 7 hybrids with ficus carica. here they are sorted from oldest to newest…
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
did you know that its possible to hybridize figs? even most fig growers don’t know this, which is surprising, since it was just over 75 years ago when the first ever ficus cross was made by a person. the person was ira condit and his cross was ficus pumila x carica. he publicly shared and documented his remarkable achievement in a 1950 paper titled “an interspecific hybrid in ficus”.
in 2012 researchers in japan documented their creation of a 2nd carica cross… ficus carica x erecta. the 3rd carica cross was documented a few years later by researchers in israel… ficus auriculata x carica. there’s another cross… ficus sarmentosa x carica… whose origin story i haven’t been able to track down.
personally i didn’t know any of this until just a few years ago. at a nursery here in socal i stumbled on condit’s cross and it blew my mind...
i assumed that a very confused wasp was responsible. it wasn’t until a year later, when i mentioned this crazy carica cross to randy baldwin, who is the embodiment of a plant encyclopedia, that i learned that condit actually deserved credit for the cross. when i learned that he made the cross way before i was even born, my mind was blown to smithereens. finding and reassembling all the pieces has been a real challenge.
for the decades that i had collected ficus species i had firmly believed that crossing them was impossible since the flowers are completely inaccessible. when i finally learned just how completely wrong my belief was, i wanted to blame someone for my ignorance. but who? was i to blame? i didn’t do enough homework? i didn’t do enough digging and research?
this past summer i gave a brief presentation on fig hybridization to the west los angeles chapter of the crfg. perhaps there were 30 or so people in attendance. they learned my pollination technique, i hope, but i doubt that most really learned the point and benefit of hybridization, which was largely, but not entirely, my fault.
there are around 900 species of ficus, and perhaps just under half of these species are closely related enough to ficus carica to make viable hybrids with it. the hybrids won’t be equally viable, of course, but i’m willing to bet that in a decade your favorite fig won’t be a pure carica. your fav fig will be a hybrid and it will taste completely different than your current favorite fig, it will fruit year around here in socal, and it will be resistant to bff (black fig fly), rkn (root knot nematodes), and numerous other pests and diseases.
is my estimate of a decade unrealistic? i guess it depends on the effectiveness of the psas (public service announcements) about fig hybridization.
no other fruits we grow have even half the untapped potential of figs. garcinias? a cross between the achacha and purple mangosteen? i wish, but i doubt its possible. crossing the achacha and luc’s is possible but the parents don’t taste as different as the common fig and the cluster fig (ficus racemosa). with over 1000 species the eugenia genus might seem like a strong contender, but i’m guessing that most aren’t going to be cross-compatible with each other. jaboticabas, pouterias, annonas? kelly todd gabrysch has started making a bunch of annona crosses, and i’m really excited to compare his crosses with my own.
people often cry about “seedy” annonas. being too seedy is why the cocktail grapefruit (mandelo) was never officially released by the uc riverside citrus breeding program. jabos, eugenias, pouterias, garcinias, and mangos are nice because they have so few seeds? maybe in terms of eating, but not in terms of progress. from 1 ripe cluster fig that i had pollinated with pollen from ficus carica i counted just over 1000 seeds...
all those seeds represent an incredible amount of variation in vigor, fruit size, quality, and flavor, tree productivity, precociousness, tolerance to cold, heat and drought, and resistance to disease and pests.
figs are the future of rare fruit.
any questions? if anyone is curious about my location, i’m up in sylmar but my best fig friend is michael fons in oceanside.
for pics of my hybrids please check out my public fb group “fig and ficus hybridization”.
