For the first time this year, a fig tree held over figs from last fall. They are now ripening. Cyprus is the variety. Not sure if these should be called breba figs or delayed main crop figs. Normal breba ripening time here is still more than a month away, and has begun first week of July in the past but I could see it beginning normally in the last week of June as trees mature.

The three photos show, first what Cyprus looked like last fall, all winter in garage, and in the February 17 photo, then second what it looked like March 8 as the leaves began to come on and the figs began to swell, and third is what it looked like yesterday May 23 as the bottom two figs had turned red dark toward ripening.

There is a missing fig at bottom because in mid-to-late April it partially reddened and ripened, and I picked it on May 2 after it had begun to shrivel, the top third red and ripe, the bottom two thirds green and unripe. Very sweet cherry syrupy flavor, tasted like it looked, the top third. The bottom two thirds was green tasteless vegetable. (no photo)

But these two red figs now below in the third photo look like they are ripening fully and conventionally except very early for here, before the end of May. Don’t know what to make of it, how many varieties or trees have the ability to hold their young figs through winter in stasis for 4 or 5 months and then ripen a month or more before the earliest breba crops, 7 or 8 months after first forming figlets.

Of note, the top two figs swelled to a greater size than the lower four figs. But the figs are ripening in the normal order from the oldest figs to the youngest, that is from the bottom on up.