Me too. I had Laradek’s, Olympian, and an unspecified box store tree that was a gift. Like you, I couldn’t really see a material difference.
My winter is too cold to grow a big tree in the ground unprotected for brebas, which is the European practice. So I grew them mostly in pots but tried one Laradek in the ground. Annual pruning reduced the size of the breba crop, and those brebas were good but not spectacular. The main crop ripened very late or not at all. I gradually culled the plants, trashing the last one a year ago.
FWIW, I’ve also grown a California Brown Turkey type. Brebas were abundant. Again, the main crop was late. It was a tasty fruit but again not well suited to my cool, short season.
Finally, I’ve grown a Southern Brown Turkey type. The fruit were very sweet but small. The variety is better suited to a climate where it can grow very large and bear thousands of figs that can be picked and eaten like cherries.
Richard says he’s found a critical mistake in commercial computational genetics software that invalidates most genetic research. He published a paper, which he nicknamed “little man” (after the atomic bomb of the same name for the effects Richard was expecting the paper to have on the field of genetics) making his case back in 2022. Ideally, once published, the argument presented in the paper would have gotten a response from experts in the field who would have published their own works either supporting Richard’s case or critiquing it, and that back-and-forth would have provided a basis for people outside the field to judge the validity of Richard’s claims. But unfortunately, that paper has been broadly ignored by the experts and after three years has yet to be cited by anyone other than Richard himself. This isn’t to say that Richard is wrong, but it does suggest that his views on the flaws of previous genetic research is a minority opinion.
Which isn’t to say there isn’t room for criticism or skepticism of older genetics research. It’s just not entirely clear just how far that criticism or skepticism should go.
I don’t know what it counts for, if it counts for anything at all, but the “Brown Turkey” that’s in circulation around here (in the Upper South) is a medium-large fig that’s early to mid season. It’s a sugar fig with some figgy flavors. Thin skin, not much seed crunch, middle-of-the-road texture that’s nice but not remarkable. It’s a bad splitter as well and has an open eye. I’ve also never seen a single breba on one.
I’m not equipped to evaluate Richard’s analysis. All I can say is that the chart hangs together in a way that gives it some credibility. For example, one grouping includes a half dozen California Brown Turkey synonyms. Another grouping included Abruzzi, Dark Portuguese, and Sal’s – all Mt Etna types previously suspected to be synonyms. There are LOTS of examples like this. Whatever method Aradhya used, it produced clusters of figs that seem sensible.
Good input. It could be that the name “Southern Brown Turkey” is applied to more than one variety. Labeling is very sloppy, as we all know.
Also I doubt that all those trees carry the original labels, so what do we really know? It’s not hard to imagine (1) somebody buys “Brown Turkey” at Home Depot, (2) the tree grows for 10-20 years, (3) somebody else asks, “Hey, what’s that tree?”, (4) the owner or his heirs answer, “Brown Turkey”, (5) the same somebody asks, “What kind of BT?”, and then (6) the owner responds, "I don’t know – it’s growing in Georgia, so it must be Southern Brown Turkey. Meanwhile, Oglethorpe is rolling over in his grave.
I doubt it is like that. Most Georgian’s religiously by plants at market sales. And often buy plants from the same old generational growers. Who tend to propagate well established local plants. Box stores are a product of recent times. And home buyers only rely on them to a limited extent because Box Stores tend not to stock locally favored plants for fruit.
Now in recent years we have seen the rise of Central/South American plant vendors at markets for sure. But they often tend to carrying commercial cultivars. Like with my recent Pineapple Guava selections we had to request variety names on the 2 types. Neither of the 2 vendors even thought to ask about what variety they were.
They tend to buy up clearance plants sold by commercial nurseries and generally the plants are well tagged. But those were not.
Wow. It is very common to get parts of a 3rd crop on ours. It is one of their most endearing traits. Pretty much agree with the other traits. SBT is not the best fig. It is a prolific and reliable sort though.
The problem is that “Brown Turkey” is an easy name for people to remember, so many people have applied it to many different distinct cultivars.
I hope someone will track down an older name for the original so called “Brown Turkey” so we can just get it back to using a name that applies only to it. That would really simplify things.
European Brown Turkey is a wonderful variety for Europe north of the Mediterranean anywhere winters are mild (e.g., coastal UK, France, Denmark) and so the tree can survive unprotected. For growers in those regions, it produces a big crop of brebas that ripen in mid-summer. In my experience, EBT brebas are superior to brebas from various San Pedros except maybe Lampiera Preta and possibly Grantham’s Royal.
When I planted my “fig house” with 4 varieties of figs, in 2016 Olympian and Brown Turkey were two of the varieties. 6 plants of each.
I have no idea which particular BT I ended up with although I picked all my plants up from a well known nursery, T&L in Woodinville WA, which is one of the companies that supplies figs and many other plants to retail stores everywhere. I still have the lit. that came with the figs and no mention is made of any particular sub species.
After 6 years I did take the BT plants out as the fruiting habit / growth habit was not working with the greenhouse. The one year that I did no pruning the breba figs were very good quality. Medium to large and great texture, flavor.
The Olympian is an excellent plant for the greenhouse culture. It naturally wants to be more of a bush than a tree. This makes it perfect for training instead of having to prune out all of the good breba wood.
After years of growing and marketing the Olympian it has become my biggest seller. Not because its the best tasting. It is the best producing. It seems to produce somewhat like a everbearing strawberry. There is no obvious separation between breba and main crop
. However, because the main crop is so huge, thinning is necessary to achieve quality fruit. I will thin hundreds of figs off each plant.
pic is the Olympian.
Peach is often tasted when a fig is not quite ripe. EBT varieties, in particular, are reported to have a mild peach flavor. But I don’t think it persists when the fruit is ripe and in its best form.
Myself, I dont have the experience of some of the masters of figdome that are on this forum so I havent sampled hardly any of the reputed high flavored varieties.
Of the ones I have trialed in my greenhouse to see if they were commercially viable:
Dessert King - discarded
Brown Turkey - discarded
Neveralla
Chicago Hardy
Violette de Bordeaux
Olympian
The Olympian has really good flavor, texture in the breba crop which can be a large crop. the following crop can be difficult to manage due to the sheer volume of fruits. When properly managed the main crop is good but not as good as the breba.
Keep in mind this is just my experience. Someone who has way more on his plate than he can manage.
Coldest we’ve gotten here isn’t too cold, but ~12 or 13 degrees, and never had any dieback. Fruit is very decent; quite different than the other popular producer here, the Desert King, and adds variety. Probably better for some cooking uses.
Regarding main crop, my experience with this tree, at least, is that the main and breba crops are very separated and I have never ripened a main. That might be because the tree is young though (~5 or 6 years, delayed by rabbits chewing it back to the ground each winter for its first 3 years).
Nice. The brebas tend to have that long neck for some reason. And the internal structure often seems jumbled, as you can see here.
The main crop on Brown Turkeys ripens very late. I would get brebas in late July but main crop fruit late Sept through October. Many fruits never ripened.
