Figs are a popular fruit enjoyed globally for their distinct flavor and texture. While many are familiar with their sweet taste and soft interior, the true nature of a fig’s core often sparks curiosity. Its unique structure sets it apart from typical fruits, inviting a closer look into its anatomy.
The Fig’s Unusual Anatomy
Botanically, a fig is not a fruit in the conventional sense, but an inverted flower structure known as a syconium. This fleshy, hollow receptacle encloses hundreds of tiny flowers within its walls. The syconium typically presents as a teardrop or pear shape, varying in size and skin color from green to purple or black depending on the cultivar.
A small opening, called the ostiole, is visible at the fig’s apex, opposite the stem end. This narrow passage links the internal flowers to the outside environment. Its unique structural design, which keeps its reproductive parts hidden, necessitates specialized pollination.
Unveiling the Interior
Inside the syconium, hundreds of tiny flowers, or florets, densely line the inner surface. Upon successful pollination, each floret develops into a small, single-seeded fruit. These are called achenes, the crunchy components often mistaken for seeds when eating a fig.
The fleshy pulp surrounding these achenes forms the bulk of the fig’s edible interior, contributing to its soft texture and sweetness. This pulp is rich in natural sugars like glucose, fructose, and sucrose, and various organic acids. The combination of sweet, succulent pulp and slightly crunchy achenes creates the distinct experience of eating a ripe fig.
The Fig Wasp Connection
The fig’s unusual structure necessitates a specific pollinator: the fig wasp. This relationship is a classic example of mutualism, where both depend on each other for reproduction. A female fig wasp, attracted by the fig’s aroma, enters the syconium through the narrow ostiole, often losing her wings and antennae.
Once inside, she navigates the internal cavity, laying her eggs within some of the short-styled flowers and depositing pollen carried from her birth fig; the eggs then develop into larvae, and male wasps emerge first, wingless and blind. These males mate with female wasps still within their galls and chew tunnels to the outside, allowing fertilized females to escape, carrying pollen to a new fig. For many commercially grown fig varieties, wasps are not present in the ripe fruit due to parthenocarpy, a process where fruit develops without fertilization. In figs that do rely on wasps for pollination, the fig produces an enzyme called ficin, which breaks down the wasp’s body, absorbing its nutrients into the fruit. Therefore, the crunchy texture in a fig comes from its numerous small achenes, not from any insect remnants.