7 July: Figs

Caprotina was a Fig Tree Festival celebrated by Roman women on this date. Here are ten things you might not know about figs.

1. Ficus carica is a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae, native to the Mediterranean region, western and southern Asia. There are over 750 known Ficus species in the world.

2. Nearly all of those species have co-evolved with a type of wasp which depends on the tree for food and a place to breed, and the tree in turn depends on the wasps for pollination. Neither could survive without the other. In fact, the fig tree doesn’t have Flowers as we know them; the flowers are inside the fruit. They are pollinated when a wasp crawls in to feed or lay eggs (the latter is in the male fruit while we only eat the female fruit, so eating a fig doesn’t mean you’re eating wasp eggs).

3. These trees are also pretty important to hornbills in Africa. When they’re about to lay eggs, the females shut themselves away in the trunks of fig trees and nest there for anything from 90-130 days, while the males bring food for them and the chicks, passing it through a small hole in the bark.

4. Figs have been around for millions of years, and would have survived the mass extinction event that wiped out the Dinosaurs. Figs are probably the first fruits to be cultivated by humans. Remains of fig trees have been found in Neolithic sites dating back to 5000 BCE and there are Sumerian stone tablets from 2500 BCE which mention them being used in cooking.

5. Fig trees probably arrived in Britain thanks to the Romans. Fig seeds have been found during the excavation of Roman settlements, but we don’t know for sure whether the Romans actually planted and cultivated the trees or if discarded seeds just sprouted on their own. The first documented fig tree in the UK was planted by Cardinal Reginald Pole, a sworn enemy of Henry VIII, in the 16^th century.

6. For a long time it was only the upper classes that ate figs. In the 18^th century, rich people grew them on south facing walls. The lower classes, however, didn’t care for them much, hence the phrase “not worth a fig”.

7. In the US, they have missionaries from Spain to thank for their fig trees. George Washington was a big fan of figs and believed everyone should have a patch of land with a fig tree on which to live in peace. He often quoted a verse from the Bible ("But they shall sit every man under his own vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”) in his letters. Washington had fig trees planted on his Mount Vernon estate in February 1798, and when he retired, he wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette: “I have once more retreated to the shades of my own Vine and Fig tree.”

8. It’s possible that the forbidden fruit in the Bible wasn’t an Apple at all, but a fig. The idea that it was an apple may have been a medieval translator getting mixed up with the word “malum”, which can mean both apple and evil. Jewish scholars have concluded that the notorious fruit is more likely to have been a fig, and Michelangelo agreed. On the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the serpent handing the fruit to Eve is coiled around a fig tree. Which makes the idea of Adam and Eve using fig leaves to cover their naughty bits make even more sense.

9. Christianity isn’t the only faith which mentions figs in their traditions. The Prophet Muhammad liked them. He called them “a fruit that descended from paradise” and recommended them as a remedy for piles and gout. In East Africa, Maasai people say when the earth and the sky became separated, all that connected them was a sacred fig tree.

10. In Hong Kong, there’s a widely held belief that spirits live in the fig trees, and that they will grant wishes. People would write their wishes on red or gold paper, tie them to a piece of string and tie the other end to an orange, and throw it into the tree. If the wish got stuck in the tree, it would come true, and the higher the branch it stuck to, the more likely it was that the wish would be granted. However, that tradition was scuppered by Elf and Safety after the weight of the wishes caused a branch to snap off, so now people can only throw their wishes into fake fig trees.

Character birthday

Sean “Fingers” Fingale, a small time criminal in England. He and his friend Darren Suggs one day found a small boy asleep in their secret hide out. Rather than notify the authorities that they’d found the missing child, they saw that he might be useful as an accomplice and took care of him, using him as a look out when they were committing crimes. When the boy grew up, he used his intelligence and genetic variant super-senses to plan more ambitious crimes and Fingers and Suggs became the accomplices to the notorious burglar known as “The Fox”. He appears in From a Jack to a King.

From A Jack To A King

A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.

A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.

Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.

Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.

When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.

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