contenders…
ficus auriculata (dioecious)
ficus coronata (dioecious)
ficus habrophylla (monoecious)
ficus nota (tibig, dioecious)
ficus opposita (dioecious)
ficus pumila (dioecious)
ficus racemosa (monoecious)
ficus sycomorus (monoecious)
ficus ulmifolia (
also?) (is-is, dioecious)
i didn’t include ficus palmata or johannis or afghanistanica because they are so similar to carica.
ficus carica is dioecious,
same as around half of the 1000 or so ficus species. so if you have a female dioecious species, like opposita, but don’t have the necessary wasp in the area, there’s a chance you can ripen and taste the fruit by pollinating it using pollen from a male carica. If you're successful then please sow the seeds and let us know how the hybrid fruit tastes.
carica has the most tasty ficus fruit, currently, but i’m sure that the most tasty ficus of the future will be a carica hybrid.
what inspired this thread is that i recently tasted the fruit of ficus habrophylla for the 1st time…
it was surprisingly good. tasted like a plum/prune! there was zero seed crunch which sadly meant no seeds, but it also means that pollination isn’t required for the fruit to ripen. the same is true of the fairchild auriculata variety that i linked to.
for the past year or so on the ourfigs forum i’ve been trying to redirect their attention from carica to other species that might be compatible, like so...
carica's closest relatives in taiwan.
the problem with this system is that it’s very inefficient. for example, here are 3 threads about the same exact article…
Cool article about figs in North Africa (8 mar 2024)
Drought tolerant figs of Tunisia (3 apr 2024)
Interesting article (2 may 2024)
the 2nd poster obviously overlooked the 1st time the article was posted, and the 3rd poster obviously overlooked the 1st and 2nd time that the article was posted. well yeah, unless you visit religiously you're definitely going to miss a lot of useful threads.
ideally we should minimize the chances of overlooking the best things.
so how to define “best”? with donations…
ourfigs fundraiser auction. basically, donations to ourfigs are used to prioritize topics, which i’m keeping track of on this google sheet…
ourfigs priorities
whether we’re talking about forums or ficus, the one constant is change. ficus adapt to change by hedging their bets with variable seedlings. if the future is drier, then the more drought tolerant seedlings will survive. forums adapt to change by, well, hmmmm...
here on the orchidboard, in 2009,
i suggested that a category be created for orchid societies voila!
it was created! you have to scroll down past quite a few other categories to find it. few people have used it. maybe it would have been a different story if it had been at the top of the page?
on growingontheedge, in 2014,
i suggested that categories be created for multiple topics. this time no voila.
and now the forum is gone, all those threads lost forever like tears in rain. well, except for the threads archived by the wayback time machine.
every forum has an optimal supply of categories, which can only be determined by the actual demand for them, which can only be discerned by donations. then, and only then, would the varieties of topics function as the most robust hedge against change. voila! the most adaptable forum possible.
this is the change that facebook and google won’t see coming until it’s too late. good riddance to irrelevant advertisements and viral nonsense. anything that trends will do so because it has substance.
2nd best ficus fruit?
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