A short history of figs

The fig is native to a region stretching from the eastern Mediterranean through western Asia, and it has been grown there for thousands of years.¹ Archaeological finds in the Jordan Valley of fig fruits that appear to have come from cultivated, parthenocarpic trees have been dated to roughly 11,000 years ago, which would make the fig one of the earliest domesticated plants, possibly earlier than cereals.²

Around the Mediterranean

Figs appear throughout ancient Greek and Roman writing. They were dried and stored as a staple, and Roman agricultural authors described distinct varieties. Wherever Mediterranean agriculture spread, figs spread with it: across North Africa, into Spain, and later to every Mediterranean-climate region colonised by Europeans.

To the Americas

Spanish colonists brought figs to the Americas in the sixteenth century. In California the fig arrived with the Franciscan missions in the eighteenth century, and the dark fig they planted is still sold as the Mission or Black Mission fig.¹ Commercial fig growing developed in California in the late nineteenth century, when Smyrna-type figs were imported and, after some years of failure, successfully pollinated once the fig wasp was introduced in 1899.¹

Figs in New York

Figs are not native to the north-eastern United States and are not commercial crops here. They arrived with immigrants, above all Italians, who planted them in yards across Brooklyn, Queens and beyond and worked out how to bring them through winter by wrapping, burying or bringing them indoors. That tradition of the backyard fig, protected each autumn and unwrapped each spring, is the one our trees in Rockaway Park belong to.

The New York paragraph is drawn from general knowledge and local experience rather than a specific published source; a citation will be added.