figs

[mudcat]

Got some figs in at Walmart. I bought two purple figs trees..They were about 3 foot tall

[DaBee]

How are your old figs doing? The ones you gave me didn't make it, though I put them on life support.

[mudcat]

Hard winter, i am sure they got froze bck bad..Will wait and see

[DaBee]

Wanna know what's interesting about figs? Read this!

First off, a fig is technically not a fruit, but a type of inflorescence known as a spadix. (Big science words, but unavoidable here.) That's a bundle of multiple flowers and seeds sealed away in a bulbous ovoid. (More science words.)In order to get pollen from one of these internal flowers to the next, nature had to devise a creature that felt like boring into the spherical stem and scooting from flower to seed. Enter the fig wasp.

Sergio Jansen Gonzalez (via Phys.org)

Fig wasp queens squeeze through a tiny opening in the fig's ostiole, a sort of vegetable pore. They think they're just there to lay eggs, which they are, but meanwhile they're spreading fig pollen, inadvertently fertilizing the seeds.
It's a one-way trip. Once the queen lays her eggs, she dies inside the pulpy center of the fig. Then the fig digests her body. She becomes one with the fig. When her eggs hatch, the wingless male wasps dig a hole through the fig's lining. The winged females escape to start the whole process over again, but the males spend their entire lives inside the fig, eventually succumbing to the same fate that took their queen.

http://www.urbo.com/content/food-facts-that-will-make-you-look-sideways-at-your-plate?rtg=intelligenceissexy-L159vU&param4=urbo-fni-fbss-2871-us-de-ocpm&param5=10154644961866186&param6=2384277192632 0085

[bikeguy]

My grandmother made the best fig preserves. I remember eating ripe figs off the tree in the summer if the jay birds didn't get them first.

[DaBee]

My grandmother made the best fig preserves. I remember eating ripe figs off the tree in the summer if the jay birds didn't get them first.

Happy birthday, my sweet brother <3.

[bikeguy]

Thanks, Sis!