Banana Fig

We just call these “figs”, but they are a member of the banana family, and one of my favourite fruits. It’s hard to beat a good fig.

Figs are shorter and fatter than bananas, they are very sweet and can sometimes be a bit sour at the same time - a great combination. The skin is always yellow when they are ripe. I say that because we do have varieties of bananas that are ripe even though the skin is quite green, and will never turn colour other than to go black when they are over ripe.

The skin of a fig tends to be thinner than that of a banana, and you definitely want to wait until they are ripe before eating them. Within a couple of days they will be over ripe, so a “fig fest” might be in order to make sure that you don’t lose any of them - fig trees seem to bear around the same time, so we tend to get a flood of figs and then none for a long time. I used figs to make banana bread once, but they really are too sweet for that - maybe if I had left out the sugar entirely it would have worked.

As with any member of the banana family, the mature trees put out suckers that grow into mature trees that will bear fruit. When a tree has finished bearing it will fall over and die, making room for the young suckers to grow and mature. Technically, you could start with just one or two trees and they would gradually become many trees.

I cannot tell the difference between the various banana tree flowers. It is not until the bunches of fruit appear and start to grow that I can identify the exact variety. The magnificent bunch of figs shown here are just about ready to pick, but alas, they aren’t mine and it is unlikely that I will be able to enjoy any of them. How sad!