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?