fig wasps in germany

[epiphyte]

big fig tree in germany with seedlings around it.  my comment...

beautiful tree, and very exciting to see evidence of fig wasps in germany!  figs only produce viable seeds when pollinated (with one or two self-pollinating exceptions like ficus gasparriniana).  you should take cuttings from the tree, and dig up the seedlings, in order to spread them around to all your local gardening friends.  preserving and proliferating the tree's cold tolerance genes will help move fig trees, and their wasps, more and more north.  soon santa claus will give you extra nice gifts in exchange for all the figs he's eating at the north pole.  i'm sure that his flying reindeer will also eat the figs and every christmas they will sow the seeds all over the world.  best gift ever.  world peace, no more wars, because everyone will be happy with bellies filled with figs.  but no pressure, haha. 

this past summer, here in sylmar (southern california), each day i put a 5 gallon jug of water in a big backpack and i'd hike out to water the trees in the public food forest i started this year.  it's mostly a fig forest, thanks to the ton of fig trees generously donated by @"Figology"#21 

a while back i spotted some coyote scat (poop) loaded with small seeds.  i put the poop in a couple pots on top of some medium and watered the pots regularly.  within a week or two the seeds germinated.  sadly the seedlings weren't figs, they were mulberries.  i suppose that's a decent consolation prize.  i'm planning to plant the mulberry seedlings in the same area where the coyotes want them to be.  

more recently i found coyote poop loaded with big seeds.  i didn't need to sow them to id them.  they were hollyleaf cherry seeds (prunus ilicifolia), our native cherry.  i had eaten a bunch recently myself, and posted about it my local fb plant group.  

here's a pic of a red fox in the uk about to steal some figs...

https://borneoficus.info/2021/09/10/ficus-carica-eaten-by-red-foxes-london-uk/

no fig wasps in the uk yet so sadly the fox's efforts to proliferate fig trees will be in vain.  

getting back to coyotes, they have been steadily moving down the continent and are currently in panama.  they crossed the panama canal already and recently entered the darian jungle, which is home to jaguars, and tropical fruit... 

Tropical coyotes are not evolving larger body size, but we hypothesize that hybridization with dogs could potentially introduce advantageous genes associated with eating fruit. Although northern coyotes commonly eat fruit (Swingen et al. 2015), this could be an even more important diet item for tropical coyotes given its year-round availability. Dogs have genetic adaptations that aid in the digestion of starches and carbohydrates (Axelsson et al. 2013), thus it is reasonable to speculate that coyote–dog hybridization could allow coyotes to better utilize new food resources. Whether such traits would outweigh deleterious genes introduced by domestic dogs presents an intriguing hypothesis yet to be tested. - hody et al, Canid collision—expanding populations of coyotes (Canis latrans) and crab-eating foxes (Cerdocyon thous) meet up in Panama

with that in mind, check out this video about restoring jungles by harnessing the seed disseminating power of animals.  

lastly, watch this short clip of a guy trying to pet a coyote and let us know if you think it's wild or not.

 

[Figology]

I’ll have a lot more soon if you’re interested. DM me.

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It’s wonderful how nature evolved in different ways to get animals to ensure their survival. 

They say the wolf used to come to campfires so they didn’t have to hunt, knowing humans would give them food. That’s a theory on how the domesticated dog descended from wolf. I’m sure it could be possible with a coyote.

 

[Figless]

@"epiphyte"#53 Always glad to see you post. I didn't see any of your clips or pictures I don't think they loaded. But it is completely amazing that Germany is becoming warm enough to host the Fig wasp in many regions. Soon Germany will have its own wild fig Forest like California has. They recently did some genome testing of the giant direwolves that lived in North America, and found that they were actually dogs not wolves. A lot of hybridization going on for millennia. Also the dingo is much more of a dog than a wolf genetically.

 

[epiphyte]

@"Figology"#21  ahhhh yeah!  we're gonna make the san fernando valley world famous for it's epic free fig forest!  

@"Figless"#18 thanks!  where i mentioned a clip or pic, just hover your cursor over it and it should turn into a hand.  that means there's a link that can be clicked on.  not sure what's the benefit of subtle style links.