My best unknown fig - trying to identify
I've bought a cuttings of this fig on eBay in 2014. The seller offered it as a Black Madeira variety so for the first 2-3 years I was hoping it's a real BM. Then it started to fruit and I slowly realized that it is something else. There are some indicias which can hopefully help the identification:
Mid-early variety
This fig usually starts to ripe 2-3 weeks later than my earliest varieties like RdB, Florea, White Marseilles - means it can be classified as mid-early variety. BM is considered to be a late variety so there is a first major difference.
Appearance
On it's own roots it's growing quite slowly when comparing it with other vigorous varieties. The internodes are very short, as you can see on the images below it makes clusters of figs. Leaves are typically 3 lobed, some have just 1 lobe. Figs can be somewhat flattened, especially the biggest ones on the tree. Their skin is very thin with visible cracks, the color somewhat varies in each season - during the extra hot years it can be purple-blue, in colder years it's more brown-purple or even purple-green. Almost every ripe fig has a noticeable opaque/hazy lighter tones on the skin. The interior is red to light-red. Average weight of the figs is about 50g on my potted plant. In ground it would be probably even bigger.
Taste
It's always difficult to describe the fruit taste so I'm not going to say that you can feel exotic undertones of mango and cinnamon or something like that. The important thing is that the taste is pretty good and quite different from other fig varieties. Not a simple one, more likely complex flavour.
Special marks
This fig seems to be strictly unifera type. Never saw a breba forming on the branches. The stem holds on the shoot extremely firmly, it's like glued and it's very hard to pick the fruit without tearing the stem apart. The remnants of the stem ofter stay on the branches until the winter then dry out and fall but sometimes start rotting and damage the shoot - such a shoot must be cut off. I grafted this variety on a fast growing rootstock (LSU Gold) and it made the same height as the mother plant in one season, I'm curious if the fruit will be the same appearance and quality on this backup plant.
Photos
The first image is from the 2017 season - both skin and pulp are little bit darker, there are no visible cracks. Second one is from 2019, the rest including the video was taken during 2021. I've added one RdB fig for size comparison.
Let's find a name for this fig
It would be easy to pick any random name like "My precious" for this fig but I prefer using existing names for the varieties because there is already such a big mess in fig naming with a lot of duplicities and mislabelings. This is why I created this page - to ask people and especially fig collectors for help and tips. There was one candidate already - the Pastiliere but I'm not quite sure about that.
You can contact me on my email address: plna(dot)zahrada(at)gmail(dot)com
Thank you.