Figs
The history, biology, and horticultural types behind Ficus carica.
Origin & Domestication
Figs may be among the very first plants ever deliberately cultivated by humans. Archaeological excavations at Gilgal I, a Neolithic site in the Jordan Valley, uncovered fossilized figs dating to roughly 9400–9200 BCE — carbonized fruit and hundreds of seed clusters that suggest fig cultivation may predate the domestication of cereal grains like wheat and barley by close to a thousand years. Most archaeobotanists place the broader domestication of the common fig in the Near East around 6,500 years ago, though the exact geographic origin remains genuinely debated.
How It Spread
The species name carica comes from the Latin caricus, referring to Caria, a region of western Anatolia in what is now Turkey — the same broader region that later gave its name to the "Smyrna" fig type. Figs reached the Americas by way of Spanish missionaries, who planted them at Mission San Diego in 1769 as they established California's mission chain — the source of the dark-skinned "Black Mission" fig still widely grown today. Thomas Jefferson grew several fig varieties at Monticello, including White Marseilles, which he called "unquestionably superior to any fig I have ever seen" in an 1809 letter.
Types & Notable Varieties
Every fig variety falls into one of four categories, based on its flower structure and how it gets pollinated. Ira Condit's authoritative 1955 monograph on fig varieties, still the standard reference for collectors today, catalogued 720 named varieties across these four types: 481 Common, 129 Smyrna, 89 Caprifig, and 21 San Pedro.
Common
The type nearly every home grower plants. Common figs develop fruit parthenocarpically — without any pollination at all. Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Celeste, Brunswick, and Chicago Hardy are all Common-type figs.
Smyrna
Smyrna figs genuinely require pollination by a tiny fig wasp that lives inside a separate, inedible Caprifig, in a process called caprification. Calimyrna — grown from Turkish Sarilop stock — is the best-known Smyrna variety.
San Pedro
A genuine middle ground: the early breba crop sets fruit without pollination, like a Common fig, but the later main crop does require it. Desert King is the most widely grown San Pedro variety.
Caprifig
Caprifigs aren't grown for their own fruit — their purpose is hosting the fig wasp and supplying pollen for Smyrna and San Pedro types.
Research & Breeding Programs
Louisiana State University's AgCenter runs the most active dedicated fig breeding program in the United States today, tracing back to horticulture professor Ed O'Rourke's original 1950s work and revived in the 1990s under horticulturist Charlie Johnson. The program has released six official varieties, each with real, documented breeding designations: O'Rourke, Champagne, Tiger, LSU Gold, LSU Purple, and Scott's Black. Champagne is reportedly O'Rourke's own personal favorite of the varieties he helped develop.
Ira Condit, working at UC Riverside in the mid-20th century, both authored the standard reference monograph on fig varieties still used by collectors today and personally bred several varieties, including Conadria (a cross of White Adriatic and a Capri-type fig, released 1956) and Flanders (released 1965).
Good to Know
Ficus carica is native to the eastern Mediterranean Basin and western Asia, and belongs to the same family (Moraceae) as mulberries. Its reproductive biology is genuinely unusual: what looks like a single fig fruit is actually an inverted cluster of tiny flowers enclosed inside a fleshy structure called a syconium — the "seeds" you taste are each the product of one of those individual flowers.