Anyone know of any cold hardy caprifigs? I’m tempted to try breeding cold hardy figs eventually. Basically If I did it would be mass planting starting in the garden, mulch first winter, then just plant them through the pasture and see which perform best.
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That is what it takes for us to come up with a variety of fruit and nuts for this area. Unfortunately, many of us have had a very bad experience with growing things from other areas. I like to use wild seedlings, Canadian and Russian fruits as a base. Then i give away my research and varities for free. No patents, which means it benefits you and everyone else right now. If Mike at 39thparallel.com will help me get varities out there by mass grafting then anyone can have them. I hope other nurseries do the same. The nice thing is once you trade or buy scion you can graft 100,000 clarks crabapples if you want bypassing the normal processes. That is great for growers like you and me. The more individuals growing varities i developed the less people pay for fruit. In theory if you have a field of wild callery rootstocks you could graft those to pears for free. Grow the family blackberry and clarks crabapple, canadian prarie cherries and hopefully soonyour fig varities. Total cost $0
Mike has been experimenting with wine berries we received several years ago. I cannot grow normal raspberries easily.
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Yeah, if I do, do a bunch of planting and get something I think is superior I would first propagate a lot for myself and do further breeding and spread it to anyone who wants it. Just I’m not aware of any caprifig that ranks up in cold hardiness like the popular cold hardy ones.
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Might take a couple generations but this would be a cool project. If I am understanding correctly a caprifig is a male that primarily is used for pollination right?
If so you may have to use a less hardy caprifig in the first generation to cross with hardy cultivars, plant those seeds and hope you get a a couple that are cold hardy. Or try growing several caprifigs with unknown hardiness and see if any are cold hardy. Very cool project keep us updated.
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Yes, caprifigs are male figs.
Yeah, probably will end up with a few random caprifigs and do a few generations of breeding before possibly seeing some noticeable results.
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But the biggest thing I am looking in my cold hardy caprifigs search is they have to be able to take being froze off and grow back and produce fruit that year. Ideally they will also have early ripening and good quality fruit.
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Which figs are monoecious, and which are dioecious? Or is it a trait?
Is the persistence trait dominant or the caduceus trait?
I am just kind of learning I had thought all figs were dioecious and were either persistent or caduceus.
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Although those terms look like opposites, they are not.
Dioecious only applies to species. It means every individual of that species is unisexual.
Monoecious applies to species and individuals. A monoecious individual has both male and female flowers (but no bisexual flowers). A Monoecious species is one where every individual is monoecious.
Persistence (or partial persistence) can only be passed by a persistent male.
The progenitor of genus Ficus was monoecious. Since that time, all species in the genus have been transitioning to dioecious. Some are thought to have completed the journey, e.g. Ficus erecta. The species of Ficus sect. Ficus have not (F. carica, F. johannis, F. palmata). Consequently we observe many in-between combinations of sex and persistence.
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Very interesting.
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Just to botanically round things out:
“Hermaphrodite” refers to an individual or a species whose flowers are solely bisexual (a single flower with both male and female parts).
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How many generations of inbreeding figs do you think it would take before problems would arise?
Cool project!! Based on other clonally propagated crops, inbreeding could be a concern. It would help to keep track of which parents you use for each cross, and at least avoid making crosses between pairs of figs that are half-siblings.
I was thinking about starting a similar project in Pendleton, Oregon. I can’t find much about cold hardiness in caprifigs, so my first step will likely be to screen a small set of caprifigs for cold hardiness in my region & select 2-3 more hardy varieties (I expect these caprifigs would be significantly less hardy than the most hardy common fig varieties). The next step would be to cross these with known cold-hardy common varieties like ‘Hardy Chicago’, hopefully producing caprifigs with similar hardiness to the most hardy common fig varieties. Finally, I hope to cross those with other hardy common fig varieties, which I hope would produce figs with improved cold hardiness. This would be a long-term project, with at least 20 years needed to produce figs with improved cold hardiness if everything goes well.
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There are options to consider depending on your motivation:
- produce pollen for hand-pollination of female F. carica to improve flavor: obtain F.c. rupestris or F. johannis from the ornamental nursery trade. They are already cold-hardy and usually Caprifig.
- breeding lines of cold-hardy F. carica: you’ll need to do some homework here. In figs, some traits are not easily transferred by Caprifigs to Females and vis a vis.
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I didn’t find anything either on which caprifigs are the most cold hardy. I did have very deep and interesting conversations with someone privately on fig breeding and fig genetics.
I was thinking of doing the same thing of crossing some caprifigs with some known cold hardy figs and select the best new caprifigs. I chose edible persistent caprifigs, based from what I found, because: 1. Edible caprifig trait is passed exclusively through the pollen parent 2. Persistence trait is also exclusively passed by the male ( If the pollen parent is a edible and persistent 100% of the offspring will Persistent and Edible (both female and caprifig)) 3. Edible caprifigs will also produce seeds (also 100% of seeds from a cross between two edible caprifigs will be edible caprifigs, no females.).
The edible persistent caprifig I currently have now is called: capri Q- DFIC 126. I would like to have another edible persistent caprifig to help prevent inbreeding.
I have a Chicago hardy fig right now, but I would also like to get a hold of Florea, vagabond, and camuna small black. Those three seem promising from what I’ve seen from other people as being able to take the cold better.
My plan for testing them for cold hardiness is to do mass plantings of the seedlings in the garden then wait for winter and let them all experience the target temperature (ex. 10°F) and then cover them all in straw and see what survives best. They also will be significantly less cold hardy as a one year seedling versus a older tree.
I was wondering about starting the seeds like carrots are done maybe with a board covering them untill they sprout?
Also was thinking of trying to have 3 or 4 different groups that I will only cross with its least related group.
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