Figs
The history, biology, and horticultural types behind Ficus carica.
One of the oldest cultivated fruits in the world
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.
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. Carl Linnaeus formally assigned the genus name Ficus in his 1737 work Genera Plantarum, and named the species Ficus carica in the 1759 edition of Systema Naturae.
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.
The four horticultural types
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 — which is why a single fig tree in a backyard reliably produces fruit with no partner tree needed. Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Celeste, Brunswick, and Chicago Hardy are all Common-type figs.
Smyrna
Smyrna figs have only female flowers and genuinely require pollination to develop — without it, the fruit drops before maturing. Pollination is carried out by a tiny fig wasp that lives inside a separate, inedible Caprifig, carrying its pollen to the Smyrna flowers in a process called caprification. Calimyrna — grown from Turkish Sarilop stock and famous for its role in Fig Newtons — is the best-known Smyrna variety.
San Pedro
A genuine middle ground: San Pedro figs produce two crops a year with two different pollination needs. The early breba crop sets fruit without any pollination, just like a Common fig. The later main crop does require pollination, and without it typically drops before ripening. Desert King is the most widely grown San Pedro variety.
Caprifig
Caprifigs aren't grown for their own fruit — their entire purpose is hosting the fig wasp and supplying the pollen that Smyrna and San Pedro types need. Commercial growers typically plant three to five Caprifig trees for every hundred Smyrna trees.
Where it comes from: a quick reference
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.