Caprification

Caprification (Lat. caprificus, a wild fig), a process of facilitating the fertilisation of the fig-flower, practised in antiquity, and still in the Levant. Branches of the wild fig are hung on the cultivated fig, which usually produces only female flowers. These bring with them an insect (Blastophaga) reared in the galls formed in the female flower of the wild fig, which carries the pollen of the male flower of that tree to the female flower of the edible fig, which it thereby fertilises. Botanists, however, have differed as to its utility.