That Fabulous Fig

     There’s is an interesting book just out that is well worth seeking out at the library. The only reason I'm not going to do a full blown write up for the newsletter is one glaring problem-the book does not mention bonsai at all! Mike Shanahan’s slim volume Gods, Wasps and Stranglers still has plenty to interest the bonsai enthusiast who would like to know more about one of the most common (and popular) types of plant used in the hobby-the Ficus.
     There are more than 750 species of Ficus, found on all continents but Antarctica.  Aside from humans, Shanahan has calculated that figs

of one sort or another figure in the diets of 1274 other animals and birds. He also makes frequent mention how figs of different sorts figure in the spiritual and mythic fabric of many, many cultures. Figs are also worth knowing about because of their fascinating reproductive strategy.
      Figs are related to mulberries, and essentially a fig is a mulberry turned inside out. The technical word is an inflorescence (a group or cluster of flowers on a stalk). A fig fruit is called a syconium –an inflorescence which forms an enlarged, hollow fleshy receptacle with multiple ovaries on the inside surface. That’s a scientific and precise was of saying an inside out mulberry (and here is where precise, proper botanical terms get things tangled up with common words regular people like you and I use-mulberries and similar shaped fruits like blackberries and raspberries are not properly considered berries to the learned botanist, they are called aggregate fruits because they contain more than one ovary. True berries-blueberries, lignon berries, banana, tomatoes, watermelons, grapes and pumpkins (all technically berries!) have but one ovary.) The definition of that was mapped out in the precise botanical terms used above gets more clear when you consider that the fig’s seeds develop in dark safety while a mulberry’s are exposed to any sort of predator and disease.
     To assure there will be more figs in the future, pollen must reach the inside of that fig fruit, and to make certain that happens, each species of fig has a species of wasp that has learned to lay its eggs inside the fig itself-the insect enters through the tiny hole or eye at the end opposite the stem (another technical term, that eye is called an ostiole).

Fig wasps featured on postage stamps issued by the nation of Kenya.

     Shanahan mentions how linked certain forms of life are, in a sort of chain of survival. When droughts in Burma caused die off of many forest plants, the native Ficus were tough enough to survive, but conserved energy by not putting out fruit. With no place to lay eggs, the wasps died out in the area too, and no ripe fruit to eat, many species of bird and animal also suffered. When the drought ended, the figs came out of survival mode and produced fruit, but it took some time for wasp population to ramp back up to allow the full pollination tasks.


      So aside from not one mention of Ficus as bonsai, I think this book is well worth a trip to the library!