Ficus carica

The common fig is a member of the mulberry or Moraceae family and is native to southwest Asia and the Mediterranean region (from Afghanistan to Portugal) but is now widely grown throughout the world for both its fruit and as an ornamental plant, growing as a tree or large shrub to a height of 7–10 m.

• Its fragrant leaves are alternate, simple, 12–25 cm long and 10–18 cm across, and deeply lobed with three or five lobes.
• Flowers are either male and female or all female, fleshy and rounded, but not visible because they are located on the inner surface of the developing fig called a 'syconium' (an enlarged, fleshy, hollow receptacle with multiple ovaries on the inside surface). They are pollinated by a wasp that burrows into the syconium, but in North America, the wasp is not present to pollinate.
• Edible fruit, referred to as a fig, consists of the numerous one-seeded fruits (druplets). It is 3–8 cm long, with a green skin, sometimes ripening to purple or brown.