Photo by Mark Fischer.

In the valley of the River Jordan at the dawn of civilization — a thousand years before the first domestication of grain and five millennia before grapes, olives, and dates were cultivated — a would-be farmer planted a collection of fig trees: the only orchard in the world. A mysterious spark had been lit; together, a community of men and women evolved into farmers and the wild fig of the forest was transformed into a crop. In the shade, the people gathered the dark, voluptuous fruits of their new labor.

And the fig tree continued to show up at milestones of the human experience, sprinkled throughout religious texts, mythology, and accounts of discovery and exploration. The fig tree was there in the Garden of Eden, at the enlightenment of Buddha, the rescue of Romulus and Remus by the she-wolf. It played its part in Demeter’s desperate search for her daughter Persephone, and saw the destruction of Pompeii. For Hindus, it represents eternal life and whispers the secrets of divine knowledge to Shiva. In Southeast Asia, it is the dwelling of spirits and magical beings. It is the tree that envelopes the Angkor Wat temples. It is one of only five plants mentioned in the Quran. It was brought to the New World in the 14^th century. It has been used in traditional medicines the world over, to treat just about every ailment known to man.

Figs have been a staple over much of the world throughout history, in the form of bread, cake, wine, porridge. It was the fare of poor and rich alike, fed to slaves and gladiators to promote strength and exchanged as precious gifts at Roman New Year celebrations. Multiple cultures swore by its powers of fertility and hopeful couples feasted indulgently. The English considered the fruit either dreadfully common or extremely fine, depending on the fashion of the times. In his poem “Figs,” a tongue-in-cheek take on carnal pleasures, D.H. Lawrence describes in luscious detail (“glittering, rosy, moist”) both the “proper” and “vulgar” way to eat one.

These days, in urban restaurants with trendy names, we like our figs with a bit of goat cheese and caramelized onion, or toasted and wrapped in prosciutto. We like them dehydrated out of a trail mix baggie from a loaded backpack, taken with gulps of cold water on top of a mountain. We like them in jam smeared on a baguette in a quaint European village. Though now figs are cultivated in orderly rows on large commercial orchards, in the Eastern Mediterranean fig trees can still be found growing wild, haphazard and abundant in the bright, hot forests of their origin. In their sprawling shade, the syrupy, seedy, crimson-colored fruit entices.