Fruit Cultivation - Including: Figs, Pineapples, Bananas, Melons, Oranges and Lemons

By William Watson

This book includes a comprehensive guide to fruit cultivation extensively illustrated with black and white photographs. A book that will appeal to the modern fruit-grower, this timeless handbook contains a wealth of information on the topic and is as valuable today as at the time of its original publication. This book concerns itself primarily with the growing of figs, pineapples, bananas, melons, oranges, and lemons; it is a must-have for gardeners interested in growing such fruits. Sir William Watson (1858 – 1935) was an English poet who was renowned in his time for the controversial political content of his verse. This book has been chosen for modern republication due to its educational value, republished now with a new prefatory biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781473392250

Book preview

Origin—Cultivation—Propagation—Insects—Varieties.

FIGS

DESCRIPTION

The Fig (Ficus Carica) (fig. 33) is a native of the south of Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia. There is in the Scriptures ample record of its cultivation in the earliest ages, and of the estimation in which the fruit was held. The Figs of Athens were celebrated for their exquisite flavour; and it is said that Xerxes was tempted by them to undertake the conquest of Attica.

Fig. 33.—Fig (Ficus Carica)

The tree, although remarkably soft-wooded, lives to a very great age—several centuries in mild climates; and even in Britain a tree of the White Marseilles variety, brought to this country by Cardinal Pole in 1525, is remembered as covering a large extent of wall, and bearing abundantly, in the garden of the Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth Palace, where several of its descendants of great age and size still exist. On the south coast, in various parts of Sussex, as at Arundel and Tarring, the Fig grows and bears most abundantly as a standard. In parts of the country, where the rigours of severe winters are not mitigated by the sea-breeze, Fig trees, if not protected, are occasionally killed down to the ground; but, although this be the case, vigorous suckers push up again and form plants. When the thermometer, for several successive nights, falls to about zero, the old wood is killed, and at 10° F. the extremities of the young shoots are mostly destroyed. Like the Grape-vine, the Fig tree can bear, as it does in the countries to which it is indigenous, a very hot summer; but not a severe winter, such as the Grape-vine withstands uninjured.

The remarkable character of what is known as the fruit of the Fig is clearly set forth in the following passages from Kerner and Oliver’s Natural History of Plants: Looking at a Fig that has been cut open lengthwise (fig. 34) it is observed that it is not a simple flower, but rather a whole collection of flowers enclosed in an urn or pear-shaped receptacle, which is really a hollow inflorescence bearing numerous flowers on its inner wall. The orifice of the urn is small and surrounded by small scales. The flowers, which are very simple in structure, almost fill the entire cavity; they are of two kinds, male and female. Each male flower is composed of several stamens, which are supported by scales and borne on a short stalk (k). The female flower is a one-celled ovary containing a single ovule. . . . In one form of F. Carica the inflorescences contain female flowers only: this is known as Ficus; in the other the inflorescences contain male flowers near the opening, and gall flowers lower down: this is known as Caprificus. The latter do not produce seeds, but are utilized by a small species of wasp (Blastophaga grossorum) as a receptacle for its eggs, the larva from which occupies the place of the seed, and a gall is formed. The wasps which deposit the eggs carry the pollen from the male flowers into the inflorescences containing normal female flowers, and these are fertilized and form seeds.

In Southern Italy and other parts of Southern Europe, where the Fig has been extensively cultivated for ages, the majority of the trees planted are Ficus individuals, i.e. such as have female flowers only in their inflorescences, these yielding the best and juiciest Figs. Fig-plants of the form known as Caprificus, which, beside male flowers, contain only gall-flowers in their inflorescences, are not cultivated, because most of their figs dry up and fall off prematurely. A few specimens of Caprificus are reared here and there in order that their inflorescences may be artificially transferred to the branches of the Ficus trees. The process of transference is called caprification, and the growers believe that the Figs of Ficus are improved by the wasps which come out of the Caprificus inflorescences and enter those of the Ficus. But this opinion, though very wide-spread amongst cultivators and peasants, is not correct. The Figs of Ficus do not require the intervention of wasps to become sweet and juicy. As a matter of fact, Ficus inflorescences which have been entirely unvisited by wasps, and have developed no fertile seeds in their little fruits, ripen into excellent eating Figs, and innumerable quantities of the Figs sold come from trees and from districts where no process of caprification is employed. It seems, therefore, that the use of caprification must be traditional, and have originated at a time when growers were not only concerned with the production of good fruit but of fertile seeds also, with a view to the multiplication of the plants. At the present day Fig trees are no longer raised from seed, but from cuttings, and caprification is consequently superfluous. Nevertheless the country people persevere with the old custom in spite of their ignorance of its real significance.

Fig. 34

a, Twig with inflorescence of Ficus pumila;