Figs are deciduous fruit trees of the genus Fig in the Moraceae family. They are native to Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other places in Southwest Asia. It has been introduced in Xinjiang, Shandong, Hebei, Beijing and other places in my country. So far, there are more than a thousand varieties of figs in the world.

According to the rules of plant growth, they bloom first and then bear fruit. But many people have never seen fig flowers, so where do the fruits come from?

Figs actually have flowers, but the flowers are not as bright as peach blossoms and apricot blossoms. Its flowers are hidden in a fat sac-like receptacle, and the fruit is actually an inflorescence. The receptacle is fleshy and fleshy, with a depression in the middle. There are many small flowers growing on the periphery of the depression. This inflorescence is generally called a cryptocephalus.

The small flowers of fig have no petals and are light red. The upper part is male flower and the lower part is female flower. Male flowers produce pollen, and female flowers produce tiny seeds after being pollinated.

There is a type of fig flower called a gall flower, which contains eggs laid by parasitic wasps. As the inflorescence of the young fruit grows, the eggs also emerge into small parasitic wasps and crawl out. They circle around the flower with pollen grains attached to their bodies, thus playing the role of pollinating the figs. The female flowers are pollinated and produce seeds.

The fig we eat is not a fruit but a torus that expands into a fleshy ball. Figs are delicious and rich in fructose and glucose. They can be eaten as fruit and used as medicine to treat diseases.

In fact, plants like figs that bear fruit before they bloom include banyan trees, bodhi trees, rubber trees, etc.