Fig tree
Ficus carica
Family · Moraceae · Irritating
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The tree that springs up by itself on walls, ruins and rock crevices all over the country, and gives the best fruit you will find on an August trail. It has a trap known to everyone who picks figs: the latex burns skin in sunlight.
Walls and rocks · Streams and ditches · Town and roadside · Fields and pasture
Also known ascommon fig
How to tell it
A large leaf, rough as sandpaper, cut into three to five rounded lobes. Any broken part bleeds sticky white latex. A characteristic leaf smell when rubbed. It grows where it should not, clinging to stone.
What it is confused with
Black mulberry
Morus nigra
Same family, same rough lobed leaf. Mulberry bleeds no white latex when broken and bears elongated berries; fig always bleeds latex. Both bear edible fruit.
What it is for
The ripe fig is eaten fresh or dried and is an ancient crop across the Mediterranean. A warning that belongs on the sheet: the latex of leaves and unripe figs contains furanocoumarins and, with sun exposure, causes severe skin burns. Picking figs in morning sun with bare arms is how people get marks that last weeks.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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