CAPRIFICATION, the fertilization of the flowers of the Smyrna fig with pollen derived from the wild fig, or caprifig. From time im memorial it has been the custom of Orientals to break off the fruits of the caprifig, bring them to the edible-fig trees and tie them to the limbs. From the caprifigs thus brought in there issues a minute insect, which, covered with pollen, crawls into the flower receptacles of the edible fig, fertilizes them, and thus pro duces a crop of seeds and brings about the sub sequent ripening of the fruit It has been shown that the varieties of the wild fig or cap rifig are the only ones which contain male or gans, while the varieties of the Smyrna fig are exclusively female. In the caprifig there are said to exist in Mediterranean regions three crops of fruit,— the spring crop, a summer crop and a third, which remains upon the trees through the winter. The fig-insect (Bias tophaga grossorum) over-winters in the third crop, oviposits in the spring crop, develops a generation within it, each individual living in the swelling of a gall-flower (a modified and unfertile female flower), and, issuing from it covered with pollen, enters the young flower receptacles of the young Smyrna fig, which are at that time of the proper size, and makes an attempt to oviposit in the true female flowers, fertilizing them at the same time by means of the pollen adhering to their bodies. The life history of the insect from that time on is not well understood, but the Blastophaga has been known to occur again in the over-win tering crop of figs. The effect of caprifica tion on the young Smyrna figs becomes readily visible within a few days; before the Blasto phaga enters the fig the latter is transverse and strongly ribbed, while a few days after fertili zation the fig swells up and becomes rounded and sleek. The male Blastophaga is always wingless. It has no ocelli, and its compound eyes are greatly reduced in size. The fact that the male rarely leaves the fig in which it is hatched might almost be inferred from these facts of winglessness and partial blindness. When this wingless male issues from the seed lace gall in which it is contained, it seeks a female gall in the interior of the same fig, gnaws a small hole through its cortex, inserts its extremely long, almost telescopic, abdomi nal extremity through the hole, and fertilizes the female. The female subsequently, with her
powerful jaws, gnaws the top of the gall off and emerges, crawling around the interior of the fig, and eventually forcing her way through the ostiolum, almost immediately seeking for young figs, which she enters, and should the fig entered prove to be a caprifig, lays her eggs at the base of as many flowers as she can find, and then dies. Should the fig entered, how euer, be a Smyrna fig, either through the fact of the caprifig from which she issued having been hung in the branches of a Smyrna-fig tree, or from the fact that she has flown to an adjoining Smyrna-fig tree, she walks around among the female flowers seeking for a proper place to oviposit. It is this futile, wandering search, when her body is covered with pollen from the caprifigs, that produces the extensive and almost perfect fertilization of the entire number of female flowers. The young larva is a delicate little maggot curved upon itself and showing no visible segmenta tion. In the full-grown larva the segments are more apparent, and with the growth of the larva the gall at the base of the male florets becomes hard, and greatly resembles a seed, turning light brown in color. The male and the female pupa each occupies a greater por tion of the interior of the gall. Consult The Fig) (United States Department of Agricul ture, Washington 1901).
Although figs are raised in California and the Southern States they have long been in ferior to the Smyrna fig, the standard kind of commerce, which owes its peculiar flavor to the number of ripe seeds which it contains. These seeds are obtained only by the process described above, and the United States Depart ment of Agriculture devoted much attention to caprification, with a view to the development of the American fig industry. The fig insects were introduced in California in 1899 and have greatly benefited the fig industry. It is now possible to produce Smyrna figs of the fine quality. About 250 tons were produced in 1915. See Firm