Fig-tree.
Botanical name:
Ficus.
A shrub sufficiently known in our gardens. The trunk is thick, but irregular, and the branches, which are very numerous, grow without any sort of order. The leaves are very large, and of a deep blackish green, broad, divided deeply at the edges, and full of a milky juice. The flowers are contained within the fruit. The fig-tree produces fruit twice in the year; the first set in spring, the second towards September, but these last never ripen with us. The dried figs of the grocers are the fruit of the same tree in Spain and Portugal, but they grow larger there, and ripen better.
Our own figs are wholesome fruit, and they are applied outwardly to swellings with success, they soften and give ease while the matter is forming within.
