At Peace

Digital Painting

2024

A good friend of mine introduced me to the fig. I hadn’t previously thought too much about the fruit, but their affection for it made me look further into why it looked so… visceral.

The fig is not a fruit in a common sense; it is actually a strange sort of flower. The fig tree produces unripe fruit, which attracts the Fig Wasp. This wasp relies on the fig for its reproduction, as the Fig relies on the wasps for pollination.

The unripe “fruit” is the flower of the fig tree. The unfertilized fig has an opening at the bottom where a Fig Wasp enters, carrying pollen from the fig she was born from. The wasp pollinates this fig, lays her eggs in it, and is absorbed by the developing fig.

The flower creates small capsules that encase both the wasp eggs and the fertilized fig seeds. When the wasps hatch, they breed and the females escape, carrying the flower’s pollen with them as they search for other trees in which to repeat the cycle. This is usually the point where the fruit is ripe and ready to pick. If left too long, the skin of the fig becomes thin and the flower splits open, attracting nectar-loving insects as well as other Fig Wasps.

There are types of fig tree that do not produce these inverted flowers; they bloom like any other plant would. These figs do not produce edible fruit, but their flowers have a delicate fragrance.

I always thought it was strange that there was a uterine quality to these fruits, but knowing their function it suddenly makes sense. There was something poetic in the inevitability of self-destruction for procreation. Many insects reproduce at the cost of their own lives, giving their nutrients and energy directly to the next generation. From dust we come and to dust we return, as they say.

…and figs are really delicious.