All,
OK, I know right off the bat that this is going to be a stupid question, but has anyone ever heard of a fig variety called Cavendish???
I stopped by a nursery yesterday looking for pine bark fines. It was one I nearly bought some fig trees from last fall because the trees were on deep, deep discount. I checked out their figs, which the owner has been propagating for years. It has been so long, in fact, that he doesn't remember the varieties and labels them simply "brown fig" and "black fig." The one labeled black has a hint of red to the leaf buds and stems, which is what lured me to buy one. In checking out labels on the trees, I came across one labeled "Cavendish" instead of "Brown fig" or "Black fig." So I said to myself, "Self, I've heard of Cavendish Bananas but never Cavendish Figs. Maybe the owner rediscovered the name of some obscure variety he's been propagating all these years." The price was right, so I took a chance and bought it.
I think there's a 99.99% chance the tree was just mislabeled, and there's a 99.9% chance it is just a Brown Turkey.
As an aside, the other reason I bought them is that they're all creepy/weepy/sprawly. I don't think this nursery propagates via tissue culture, which I'm told often results in lots of floppy shoots without a dominant stem. It is more likely that he clips the long branches of the trees that haven't sold the previous season and roots them. I'm told that a combination of certain greenhouse growing conditions and over fertilization can lead to a creepy/sprawly growth habit.
(I had a thread about this last fall --- perhaps I'll go back and search for it and edit this post to include a link.)
Jim