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The Reproductive Cycle of Some Fig Trees is Intricate

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Hello gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. About half the cultivated varieties of figs are dioecious and have a very complicated means of pollination. The male trees have developing figs with both male and female flower parts inside them. A mated female wasp, so tiny she can fit through the eye of a needle, enters a receptive fig through a small pore, or ostiole. She lays eggs in the female flowers with short calyxes, the botanical term for floral tubes. Those eggs hatch into male and female wasps, mating takes place inside the fig. Female wasps leave those overwintering figs in the spring, picking up pollen on their way out and fly to other fig trees, some of which only produce female flowers, but with calyx tubes too long for ovulation. In her attempts to lay eggs she pollinates those flowers and stimulates fruit development before she dies in the fruit.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.