You’ll never see a fig’s flowers until you open one up. Unlike a blossoming plum, apple, or pear tree, figs hold their many microscopic white blooms inside of plump pouches at the end of their stems.

The story of the fig and the wasp goes back as many years as man has grown fig trees, because fig wasps are the only pollinators for several species of fig trees. It is said that they co-evolved. This ...

Are there really dead wasps in figs? You’ve likely heard the rumors, and it turns out that it’s (sometimes) true. Sure, it sounds kind of gross and a little sad. But when you find out about the whole ...

You might not know this, but most figs have dead wasps in them at some point. That’s right. Wasps. And if that surprises you, then hold onto your hat: Scientists have found out how another species of ...

The first time I ate a fig I was about 40 years old. I was with my husband, Sam, and we rented a cottage on a California vineyard in Sepastopol. One day we were in the hot tub on the deck and we ...

Textbooks that marvel over an extreme example of the buddy system–fig species that supposedly each pair up with a lone pollinating wasp species–may need rewriting, according to a new genetic analysis.

It takes a special kind of insect to pollinate an inside-out flower, which is exactly what the wasps that pollinate figs do. Crawling inside the firm swelling lined with microscopic flowers that will ...

Contrary to prevailing wisdom concerning one of the most famous textbook examples of a tightly co-evolved mutualism, not every fig species is pollinated by its own unique wasp species. In this ...