40 Fun Facts About Figs

Which insect crawls inside a fig through a tiny opening to pollinate it, often losing its wings?

Wasp females squeeze in through the fig's narrow opening, lay their eggs, pollinate it and die inside. Most fig species depend on a partner insect of their own.

Fig Newtons, launched by the Kennedy Biscuit Company, are named after a suburb of which US city?

Boston's suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, lent its name when a plant manager christened the new fig-filled cookie after the nearby town.

In Genesis, which couple sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves after eating forbidden fruit?

Adam and Eve's leafy cover-up is why later artists and censors used fig leaves to hide the nudity of painted and sculpted figures.

Which teacher is said to have reached enlightenment after seven weeks meditating under a sacred fig?

The Buddha sat beneath a Ficus religiosa, now known as the bodhi tree, and its heart-shaped leaves became a symbol of wisdom in religious art.

Which country grows more figs than any other, with its Aydın province famous for dried fruit exports?

Turkey harvests roughly a quarter of the world's figs, and its dried crop was long sold abroad as Smyrna figs after the port that shipped them.

In Roman legend, which twins were suckled by a she-wolf in the shade of a wild fig tree?

Romulus and Remus drifted ashore in their cradle beside the tree, the Ficus Ruminalis, which Romans went on to treat as sacred.

According to Plutarch, which queen died after an asp was smuggled to her in a basket of figs?

Cleopatra's snake in the fruit basket is only one version Plutarch offers: he also mentions poison scratched into her skin with a hairpin.

A fig's hollow interior is lined with many of which plant part, hidden completely from view?

Flowers bloom unseen inside every fig, which is why the tree never shows blossom. The crunchy seeds are really the tiny one-seeded fruits those flowers leave behind.

The French, Spanish and Italian words for which organ descend from a Latin term meaning fig-stuffed?

Liver from geese fattened on figs was the Roman delicacy iecur ficatum, and the fig half of the phrase survives in foie, hígado and fegato.

Despite its name, the figgy pudding demanded in a famous carol was often made with which dried fruit?

Raisins filled the puddings of England's West Country, where a figgy pudding meant a raisin or plum pudding and need not contain a single fig.

Figs share a plant family with breadfruit and jackfruit that is usually named after which other fruit?

Mulberry gives the family Moraceae its everyday name. About the only trait all of its members share is a milky sap in their soft tissues.

Black Mission figs reached California in the 18th century with missionaries of which Catholic order?

Franciscans planted the dark-skinned fig at San Diego and carried it north as each new mission was built, and the early padres grew no other variety.

Which English word for a fawning flatterer comes from a Greek term meaning one who shows figs?

Sycophant first meant a malicious accuser in the courts of Athens, and one old story ties the name to informers who reported illegal fig exports.

At-Tin, the Quran's 95th sura, is named for the fig and opens by naming it beside which fruit?

Olive and fig open the sura as a pair, which commentators read as symbols of the eastern Mediterranean lands where both trees thrive.

The banyan, a fig that turns hanging roots into extra trunks, is which country's national tree?

India's national tree can spread over more than a hectare, and one famous giant near Kolkata has lived on its prop trunks alone since its main trunk was removed in 1925.

Which material was once tapped across Sumatra and Malaya from the sap of a fig now popular as a houseplant?

Rubber came from Ficus elastica, sold today as the rubber plant, until the Pará tree arrived from Brazil in the late 1800s and took over the plantations.

What name is given to figs that sprout in a treetop, send roots down and slowly envelop their host?

Stranglers start life high in the canopy to win the race for light, and when the host tree dies they can stand on as a hollow column of roots.

Which American snack company, formed by a bakery merger in 1898, trademarked the Fig Newton?

Nabisco, born as the National Biscuit Company, inherited the recipe and its dough-and-jam machine, then dropped Fig from the cookie's name in 2012.

Since the late 1800s, syrup of figs blended with senna has been sold as which kind of remedy?

Laxative syrups made the fig a medicine-cabinet staple, while older Mediterranean folk practice dabbed the tree's milky sap on warts and calluses.

Which Greek philosopher wrote that tiny insects leave wild figs and keep cultivated figs from dropping?

Aristotle described the insects in his History of Animals but believed they arose spontaneously, never guessing they carried pollen between trees.

The banyan fig is named after the Baniyas, members of which profession who gathered in its shade?

Traders known as banians gathered beneath such a tree and, in one account, built a small shrine there, so European travellers borrowed their name for the fig itself.

The fiddle-leaf fig, a fashionable houseplant of the 2010s, grows wild in the rainforests of which region?

West Africa is home to the wild tree, which can reach 12 metres in lowland forest from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, far taller than any living-room specimen.

In Meghalaya, the Khasi people train the aerial roots of fig trees into which living structures?

Bridges of living root strengthen as the trees grow: a mature one can carry 50 people at once and may last for several hundred years.

Seedless figs found at Gilgal I suggest people grew figs a thousand years before domesticating which grain?

Wheat followed about a thousand years after the 11,400-year-old figs stored in a Jordan Valley house, which may make the fig the first plant humans farmed.

Which Roman emperor was rumoured to have been killed by figs that his wife Livia smeared with poison?

Augustus is said to have eaten the fruit from his own garden, and a fig variety called the Liviana was later grown by Roman gardeners.

The fig sign, a thumb tucked between two fingers, was traditionally made to ward off which threat?

The evil eye was the gesture's main target, and ancient Greeks wore amulets shaped like the fist around their necks for the same protection.

A detachable plaster fig leaf was made to cover a cast of which statue during Queen Victoria's visits?

David, in a plaster copy at the Victoria and Albert Museum, had the leaf hung on two hooks before royal visits. The leaf is now displayed beside the cast.

The caprifig, the wild fig whose pollen cultivated trees need, is named in part after which animal?

Goat is caper in Latin, and the name stuck to the inedible wild fig that Greek farmers tied into their orchards so the cultivated crop would set.

Fig tree sap contains ficin, an enzyme that, like pineapple's bromelain, breaks down which nutrient?

Protein is what ficin digests, so the enzyme has been added to meat tenderisers and is used to clean the material for surgical stitches.

Which Athenian statesman is said to have made a law around 590 BC banning the export of figs from Attica?

Solon let only one product of the soil be sold abroad, and Plutarch thought that made the old tale of a ban on fig exports believable.

Which Hebrew prophet told King Hezekiah's attendants to lay a cake of figs on the king's boil?

Isaiah's fig poultice is told twice in the Bible, and rabbis called the cure a miracle within a miracle because figs would normally make a boil worse.

The Moreton Bay fig, whose imposing buttress roots fill parks in California, is native to which country?

Australia's east coast is its home, and a seedling handed over by a visiting sailor in 1876 grew into the Santa Barbara giant, believed to be the largest in the United States.

How did Italian immigrants in cold North American cities traditionally protect fig trees through winter?

Burying them meant digging a trench, cutting part of the root system and bending the whole tree into the ground under a heavy layer of soil and leaves.

Strict followers of which religion often reject figs because a pollinating insect may have died inside?

Jainism's strictest followers can turn to fig varieties that ripen with no pollination at all, which growers raise for exactly such markets.

Which ancient civilisation revered the sycamore fig as its tree of life and linked it to the goddess Hathor?

Egypt's gardeners planted the tree around their pools, its fruit and timber fill tombs of every kingdom, and some mummy caskets were built from its wood.

Cuccidati, fig-stuffed cookies traditionally baked for the winter holidays, come from which Italian island?

Sicily's cuccidati are iced, topped with rainbow sprinkles and sometimes curved into rings called buccellati, meaning little bracelets.

What Spanish-derived name is given to the early fig crop that ripens in spring on last year's wood?

Breba figs take their name from the Spanish breva, and growers of some varieties pick them off unripe so the tree feeds its main crop instead.

Aiyu jelly, a dessert set from the seeds of a creeping fig, is a speciality of which island?

Taiwan's aiyu jelly is made by working the seeds in water until a gel forms and sets, and in Singapore the same treat is sold as ice jelly.

A banyan fig planted in 1873 and badly burned by the 2023 wildfires stands in which Hawaiian town?

Lahaina's banyan arrived as a gift from missionaries, was planted in the courthouse square by the local sheriff and grew into the largest in Hawaii.

Figs are one of the Seven Species, the prized produce of the Land of Israel listed in which biblical book?

Deuteronomy lists two grains and five fruits, and the seven are traditionally eaten at Tu Bishvat, the Jewish New Year for Trees.