Ficus sur fruit and occupants

Eating Ficus sur fruits is popular with some, as these ants are indicating. Flocks of African green pigeons are known to be informed somehow about F. sur fruit being ripe on planted trees by the Magaliesberg. Many others among Africa’s hungry, also people, follow suit in season with gusto.

Coates Palgrave (2002) describes the taste of these figs as “a sweet, if somewhat insipid flavour”, continuing that jam may be produced when adding other “suitable” fruits including apples.

The omnipresent phenomenon of superstition also contributes to fig lore: Eating the first F. sur fruits safeguards “the welfare of the family itself and of the entire area in which it lives” (Coates Palgrave, 2002, p. 150).

Just make sure to pick fruits free from too many co-eaters!