I bought this Italian Honey and Italian Everbearing fig from Burnt Ridge last year and the leaves have this discoloration. Could this be mosaic? if so how bad does it affect the fig taste and how easy will it spread to my other fig trees which are only 5’ away. I thought about calling them and see if they could confirm the disease. I’ll pull them out of the ground if need be just wanted feed back if the taste is effected and if it spreads easily.
Yes that’s FMV. It’s supposedly spread by the fig bud mite. My experience is that it comes and goes even on one plant. One yr it’s bad and the next not. Also as on your tree one shoot can be bad and another little or none.
Taste of the fruit isn’t affected. The yield will be affected if it’s severe enough to affect growth and leaf area. Those two leaves look pretty bad but not others I can see.
If you are going to have many figs it’s a fact of life. Some say they never have it. But my thought is their trees likely are infected but do to growing conditions it hasn’t manifest it’s self yet in visible symptoms.
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So next year it might not show any affect the this virus? I have 15 other fig trees varieties some that I have grown from tissue cultures, would you pull these 2 plant out to save the other 15 varieties of fig before they show the sign?
This tree actually has another new tree coming up from the roots but I’m not sure if it’s another Italian Honey or if it’s a root stock of some kind but you can see the color difference.
It does look like FMV, the effect on the plant can vary from a few leaf symptoms to necrotic spots on the fruit and even stunting and decline. It doesn’t necessarily affect the taste on its own. From what I gather, some nurseries in the PNW have had serious problems with FMV… which would indicate that the vector, fig bud mites, are present.
Without any virus the mite does not cause much harm, chlorotic spots on the leaves, browning, maybe some fruit drop, increased spoilage, deformed leaves early in the year… and without the mite the plant can usually outgrow the virus. But the mite will reinfect any part of the plant that outgrows it, and will spread the virus to other trees in the area which gives them multiple strains of FMV as well as other fig viruses.
One person’s experience will be very different from another’s and not knowing the variables for each (the mites are microscopic and have been largely ignored or the symptoms misidentified as FMV) causes disagreement. Some people will tell you that your plant will be fine after more fertilizer and pruning, others would say to get rid of it because it is not worth the risk. The most important thing though is maintaining your growing areas to be fig bud mite free, without the mite the virus can’t spread… and you actually can improve the health of the tree. That means quarantining new plants and cuttings andtreating them for eriophyid mites before you introduce them to your other trees.
Fig bud mites spread easily, on your hands/clothes, birds, pets, wind… so be cautious. Their population levels will depend on natural pressure from predators so areas where figs grow wild (California, Europe etc.) and the mite is common should actually have fewer mites than a region with no fig trees/mites because the predators are not necessarily there or can’t survive as well.
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It is a fact!
The healthy sucker will stay healthy if there are no mites… Cuttings/growths that do not show symptoms when young never show symptoms, IME. I would cut the old trunk at ground level.
p.s. Once in a while the leaves on a growth will show no symptoms but the axillary buds can all be infected, as if the virus is isolated to parts of the meristem (like a chimera). But normally a growth will healthy leaves will have healthy buds and fruit.
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It does look like FMV.
I recently had one Mary Lane fig grown from cutting that exhibited this strange mottling on its leaves. Several folks (including hoosierbanana) on the figs4funforum advised me that it was FMV and I discarded this plant.
Now many of my other cuttings, now that there are outdoors experiencing some heat stress, are also exhibiting these symptoms. Many of these cuttings were obtained from a completely different source and looked very healthy initially. Perhaps they got infected or perhaps it was already latent.
I also have a fairly large Violette De Bourdeaux plant that exhibited these symptoms earlier this season when it was just leafing out. Now that it is growing rapidly, it seems to have outgrown it. Only time will tell if the problem comes back and impacts productivity.
My observations so far lead me to conclude one or more of the following:
- FMV is very common and possibly latent in most fig plants.
OR - FMV is HIGHLY infectious and even if you had one FMV infected plant in proximity to the others, you will definitely infect the others even if you took the best precautions.
On the positive side, it may be possible for the plant to outgrow the symptoms.
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That doesn’t sound good, FMV will not jump from one plant to another without the mite, it is proven to not be present in the sap which makes transmission more difficult. Fig bud mites are so small they pierce individual plant cells without killing them, allowing the virus to reproduce and spread from cell to cell and during cellular division. The mites will not always cause symptoms, for example if the other plants were not making new leaves when they got the mites they would not show any blotching/deformity on the leaves because those symptoms only show up when new leaves are forming.
Also, look for aphids, they cause similar symptoms because they also feed on the young leaves. Argentine ants put them on some of my trees early in the season so look for the ants as well.
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I don’t think you can cure FMV but can I spray and treat the other close by fig tree leaves to prevent the mites from spreading and kill them if present?
I grafted some limbs of the 2 infected trees onto another tree that did not have FMV is that tree now infected? The buds have can out already and are about 1" long.
The new tree coming up from the roots of the infected tree, should I discard it as well even though the leaves look good?
I will probably remove the 2 trees and discard the cutting that are rooting as well.
Hoosier said to keep it and discard the main trunk. No nursery i know of sells grafted figs. So no rootstock. I myself would not do that, but it is an option for sure.
I am not going to worry about my plants, some have it, some don’t. I don’t see much of a downside to infected plants. A chance it could spread, but also a chance monkeys could fly out of my butt. So I’m not going to worry about it.
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You must have had an abundance of bananas for breakfast
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Most of my fig trees have FMV symptoms on many of the leaves yet I get large crops of fantastic fruit. Only a small percentage of the fruit are negatively impacted and even most of those fruit are still edible, just slightly deformed with some skin callousing.
I don’t believe that you need to be concerned about FMV. In my experience as a home grower, FMV is a non issue in comparison to all the other disease and pest pressures that we face in the orchard and garden.
Here is a pic of some fruit from one of my heavily infected trees.
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I agree with Dan - don’t worry be happy. On my well-established plants I hardly ever see it, maybe a leaf or two early in the season and thats it. Young plants getting established are more stressed and will show more symptoms.
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Well if I don’t the monkeys may come out! 
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Another vote for just let them grow and enjoy the fruit. About half my figs have FMV and the only one that is really slowed down is a LaRadek English Brown Turkey. That fig also seems to have thinner stems and branches than my other figs, so I don’t know if that makes it more susceptible or if that is a result of the FMV. Either way, after sulking with FMV for a while after rooting last year it took off and passed some of my cuttings that showed no sign. I also have it in my Black Bethlehem in a container that produced well over 100 great figs last year.
If you want to commit to a FMV-free fig grove, I think that is very admirable, but it will be challenging getting some types of figs or having to quarantine any new ones you get and keep them separate.
On the other hand, Drew’s monkey issue is something that should definitely be treated.
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Yeah it started after the first time I saw the Wizard of Oz flying monkey scene.
I’m looking for Black Bethlehem cuttings, Bass says it will produce figs if killed to the ground, plus it sounds good.
Haven’t seen this either, that’s the fig sending up new growth from the roots.
I second this. I think most figs have it. I’ve noticed it on mine but crop yield seems unaffected.
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The reason I though it might be grafted is that the tree looks like it was either grafted at the base or the main tree was cut out? Also does the new tree leaves look like a Italian Honey?
Yes, that is what Italian Honey leaves are supposed to look like. If you just leave that tree alone the healthy growth will smother the stunted trunk
They are tough to kill because they have a short life cycle, reside in unripe figs and the buds, and do not ingest spray residues. The best way to get them is with a spray that is systemic or translaminar, spiromesefin is very effective, you can get sample sizes on eBay cheap, the rate is about 1 ml. per gallon so a little goes a long way.
Not many people have ever publicly discussed what has worked for them. For a long time, experienced growers would unanimously identify fig bud mite symptoms as FMV, never even mention the mites and say no worries, so no wonder nobody wants to talk about them. Sulfur is recommended for control in fig orchards, I doubt it would eradicate them but should provide good control if you would rather do that, but the sulfur will obscure the mites so you won’t be able to visually monitor with a microscope.
FMV moves through the plant slowly, the whole tree is not infected, but the growth you put it on might be.
It is a fact though that nearly every single tree found growing on the east coast shows no FMV symptoms. Preserving them as they are is the right thing to do. Likewise, I have “cleaned up” some varieties and would hate to see years of work/good luck lost. One shot of spiromesefin is all it takes on new plants, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
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