Fellow fig fan and Greek philosopher Epictetus has some advice that I had no choice but to accept.

This patient man knew that “Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”

I desperately desired figs and my persistence paid off because , finally, this year, for the first time ever, I harvested fruit from one of my fig trees. With an Italian name like Bellincampi (translation: beautiful field) and a history of old country fig-growing traditions, I wanted to believe that I should have been a natural to grow figs.

However, for years and years, my fig plants either perished or didn’t provide any fruit. Throughout these trials, I have asked for and received lots of advice — interestingly, very conflicting advice. Prune, don’t prune, cut the roots back, bring plants inside for the winter, leave outside for the winter but bury by putting the tree on its side and a cover of leaves, straw, or dirt — all advice given and all tried, but all failed until now. This year’s success cannot be credited to any of the methods above. It is a mystery what was different or why they yielded those beautiful globs of sweetness, but one that was deliciously accepted.

Figs shouldn’t be that hard to manage; after all, humans have had thousands and thousands of years of practice growing them. Known to be one of the oldest cultivated plants, preceding wheat, barley and legumes, figs were first produced agriculturally over 11,000 years ago. Native to Asia and the Mediterranean, they were moved all over the world, and came to this country in 1769, carried to the West Coast by Spanish missionaries.

Though preferring warmer and more tropical climes, some types of fig trees can and do survive in our cooler region if one applies (or not) the aforementioned adaptations.

Surviving is one thing and fruiting is another. Botanically, fig fruits are syconia, a swelling of the stem with internal flowers — their ovaries are held within that hollow receptacle. Some fig varieties must be fertilized by others and some self-fertilize, the latter in the case of the figs that survive here.

The fig type that needs to be fertilized is reliant on a wasp in a fascinating co-dependency. A female wasp enters the syconia though a hole on the bottom of the fruit, which is such a tight squeeze that she loses her wings on the entry. Her body is laden with pollen from her natal syconia that fertilizes the internal flowers of her new syconia. She lays her eggs in the interior of the fruit, after which she dies (yes, inside the syconia). 

Those lost wings never again needed.  Her fertilized eggs will hatch males and females who will mate (yes, they are siblings) inside the fruit. The males will then dig a tunnel for their fertilized sisters to escape from, but those males never leave, perishing, as the queen did, in the fruit chamber (if you eat wild fruit, you might have consumed dead or decaying wasps).

So, figs are arguably not vegetarian. The females exit through those male-excavated tunnels and the cycle will start anew. We don’t need to worry about eating wasps with our figs, as that saga takes place in wild, non-commercial varieties of figs. Even if we did, I would happily partake with gusto of this favorite fruit the way DH Laurence advised: “The proper way to eat a fig, in society, Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump, And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.”

And I did eat those figs just as DH suggested.

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.