Chicago Hardy

Chicago Hardy's history is genuinely less settled than commonly repeated. What is documented: Fred Born found the tree by chance in Chicago sometime before 1984, after a journalist from Organic Gardening Magazine, who had called Born for advice on winter fig protection, mentioned a tree they knew of on Chicago's South Side. Born tracked down and propagated that tree. Some in the fig-collecting community have speculated the original tree may trace back to the Mt. Etna region of Sicily by way of Brooklyn (where it was reportedly called "Bensonhurst Purple" before Born's discovery), a story sometimes attributed to Hanc Mathies and the DiPaola family of Belleclare Nursery — but longtime collectors researching this history have explicitly noted no credible documented evidence has ever been presented for that specific chain of custody, despite it being widely repeated. Regardless of its precise origin, the variety is exceptionally cold-hardy, capable of dying back to the ground in harsh winters and reliably resprouting from the roots to still produce a fall crop the same year — the trait that has made it one of the standard, most widely planted fig varieties for cold-climate US growers. Fruit is medium-sized, purplish-blue-bronze skin, with soft, jammy flesh, sweet flavor, and honey notes.