Field Museum of Natural History
DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY
Chicago, 1922
Figs
"The wild figs upon the fig trees contain a creature
called psen; this is at first a little worm, and afterwards
having ruptured the case the psen flies out, and leaves it
behind. It then pierces the unripe figs, and causes them
not to fall off, wherefore gardeners place wild fruit near
the cultivated kinds, and plant the wild and cultivated
plants near each other." —Aristotle. History of Animals.
B. V., Ch. XXVI 3.
Botanically the figs are a subdivision of the mulberry family. They are peculiar in not having their flowers exposed, like most flowering plants, but concealed within a hollow, urn-shaped receptacle which has precisely the appearance of a young fruit. The apparent absence of flowers is often a matter for comment. An old Chinese writer on Materia Medica and Natural History in discussing the fig calls it the "fruit without flower." In reality the flowers are numerous but insignificant in size and in appearance. All other members of the family to which the figs belong have, like the mulberry, the flowers and the individual fruits on the outside.
Some 600 species of wild figs have been described to date. A few of them are cultivated or well-known plants, such as the rubber plant which in its normal habitat is a rubber yielding tree, the Banyan tree which with its numerous proproots may spread over an acre or more of ground, and the sycamore fig that furnished the everlasting wood for the coffins of the Pharaohs. The vast majority of figs, however, grow in semi-tropical and tropical forests and jungles as shrubs, trees, or
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