Granny's Green Thumb - Part 1

(pierced or made cuts in) the hard immature sycomore fig (Ficus sycomorus) fruit with a knife so they would produce ethylene, an odorless, tasteless gas that promotes ripening.

Within 3-4 days the hard, green immature fruit (syconia) would enlarge and become sweet and fleshy. Ethylene gas is also used on green bananas to make them start ripening.

The fig tree that Jesus came upon on the outskirts of Jerusalem in spring, though fully leafed out, bore no ripe fruit. This tree probably had no mature fruit when He saw it because it was too early in the spring for ripe fruit. Or perhaps it had simply not been pollinated, possibly because it was a type of fig that needed a specific wasp pollinator which wasn't in abundance when the tree flowered.

Readers can learn more interesting botanical and horticultural facts by accessing Wayne's Word, An On-Line Textbook of Natural History.

© July, 2004 by Georgene A. Bramlage

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