Has anyone heard of this white Portuguese fig?  A Portuguese woman was selling trees at the farmers’ market.  She says she sells trees and fresh figs from 5 Portuguese varieties.  I’ve seen the mother trees in the neighborhood and they’re huge – I’m always impressed that they manage to cover them for the winter.

Ah... Where in MA? My wife will kill me, but I'd love to get more if I can.

Fall River - I'll give you the details if you're interested.

Ben

Never heard of this fig, Ben any idea where in Portugal this fig is from? Mainland or Azores? Reason I ask is because there is not allot of information about figs from the Azores out on the web but there are allot of old tasty varieties in the Azores.

I am going on Sat to see this Farmer's Market so I'll pepper this person and others. I'll try to take pics too.

nelson20vt -- They're all from the mainland.  I've yet to find a fig variety from the Azores, even though there is a large immigrant population here from those islands.  When I visited Sao Miguel a couple of years ago, the trees I saw everywhere all seemed to be of the same variety.  I've heard of Capelas and a couple of others from the Azores -- it wouldn't surprise me if there are many others, although they might be hard to find at this point. 

Portugal is famous for having something like 100-300 varieties of wine grapes that aren't found anywhere else.  The same may be true of Portuguese figs to a certain extent.

nelson20vt, do you have personal experience with these tasty Azorean varieties?

So I went today and bought from this couple the Alvas (White) and an unknown black. I had a hard time conversing with them. The couple even had diferent prices for the figs amongst themselves. They said that they have 7 different kinds, all together. They bury them every year. These are planted about a 1/4 mile from the water. Located about half way between Providence and Cape Cod.

Thanks for the pictures – I’m glad you were able to pick up some nice trees. The woman told me that she also has Pingo de Mel, but that Alvas is her favorite. It’s too bad that she doesn’t have a name for the black one. I have an unidentified Portuguese black fig from a different vendor at the same market and it’s definitely a different tree.

Alvas leaf looks sort of like the shape of Preto/Bl Madeira, but it is much lighter green color and looks much thinner.