so, one thing that i keep seeing pop up everywhere is "synonym".

some of the synonyms i've seen linking apparently different varieties together seem too hard to believe.  to further complicate this matter, i've seen folks get the same cutting from the same person, but it produces different looking and, supposedly, different tasting fruit in New Jersey versus New Mexico.  this makes me wonder, is this how synonym comes to be - same plant producing different looking fruit, or maybe from a different parent?  or just different altogether?

so, truly, this is confusing to me. who decides what is a synonym to what?  how is this decided?  i found a post from 2008 talking about synonym linking in the "new" varieties page, but ... there is confusion with that also, it seemed.

one of particular confusion for me, and of interest as well, is Violet of Argenteuil.  is it also Dauphine?  and also Adam, which is also a synonym to Dauphine?  i'm dizzy now.  can someone help?  :D

i lauged at one of Gene's comments in another thread about his "crazy fig".  i think trying to name all of these figs is crazy, and wonder who makes this decision!  ;)

I cant help but I feel your pain it is very confusing but figs are so variable and if someone does'nt know the name they name it and later on when someone else figures out what it is it becomes a synonym.
just speculating on this but when I was growing crotons that was the big problem crotons sport and change all the time and everyone was confused. but that is part of what keeps it interesting

Jason, the synonyms at Figs 4 Fun are all documented (though I haven't gone back and added all the links, yet).  Yes some are obviously crazy and wrong, but they were listed that way somewhere. I don't pretend to sort out the right ones and the wrong ones, only to give you as complete a record as possible of the information available. Each person then has to evaluate the info for themselves. I put up the pictures of what they look like at my location, but even that doesn't in any way mean that they will look that way at your location. I have figs here that are honey flavored and colored one year, and the next they are strawberry colored and flavored, and some times they change halfway through the year. I could give them two different names, show you two different pictures, and you would say they are not the same fig, but they, in fact, are. That is the FUN of figs.

"that is the fun of figs"

You should have put an exclamation point behind that! 

Indeed, I have read many accounts of this, and this actually makes a childhood memory make sense (fruits changing).  I remember the massive number of figs growing at relatives' house outside of San Antonio when I was a kid.  I swore they just had some other trees mixed in or something or I just assumed they planted different trees all the time (I was a kid, kid logic! "don't ask questions, they're too good!!")

I'm still confused about fig synonym.Can I say 'A' synonym with 'B' also means that 'A' = 'B'? or 'A' almost same as 'B' but 'A' has slightly different characteristic?

What do you think?


thanks.

I can't help with synonyms, but I might be able to shed a little light on why same variety performs differently in different locales.  With enough time that one variety can drift into two similar but different varieties, Mt Etnas come to mind.

The expression of the DNA can change with environmental conditions.  Nature and Nurture working hand in hand.

Look up Epigenetics.

 

To me anyway, the term "synonym" as applied to figs means that plants/clones from exact same variety are called different names by different people.  There are also situations where very similar varieties (possibly the same but this is unknown) varieties are lumped into families e.g. the Mt. Etna type of figs.  Admittedly, it is very difficult to establish in figs whether two different named figs are indeed identical.  If they can be traced back to a common parent plant then that is strong evidence but usually this is not possible.  That leaves us with DNA analysis which seems to still be rather crude as applied to figs.  Then there are epigenetic adaptations to the environment as Don points out.