About 27 years ago, when i was a kid, i lived in Turkey--i was a military brat. My parents and i would go to the stables on base to either ride, or help take care of my babysitters horse when she was away. The man who ran the stables was an older Turkish gentleman named Mustafa. None of that is really relevant though.

At the stables there were a couple of fig trees. He told us that the fruit of one of the trees was safe to eat, but the fruit of other tree was not. He said it gave him sores, and foaming at the mouth when he ate them, and he said that they were called "crazy figs."

Occasionally, i'll remember Mustafa, and his crazy figs. However, when i try to find any information on them, i come up with zip. i don't think he had a latex allergy, and was simply eating them before they were ripe, or not letting them sit long enough for the ficain to reduce. The way he said it implied that the fruit was never okay to eat.

My question is "Are there figs that are not safe to eat?"

Perhaps he was referring to the unripe fruit of Ficus sycamorus. these figs are inferior in taste to Ficus Carica, but still edible. Ficus sycamorus has its place in medicine going back to ancient Egypt. I'm not familiar with the fruit, but read that people use the sap from those gigantic trees to treat certain skin ailments. I presume that eating an unripe fruit from that variety might cause mouth irritation.

Do you think he preferred those figs and didn't want you eating them? People have done this to me when I was a kid so it popped in my head lol, you never know...

Hi,
For me the second tree was just a caprifig or a random seedling with bad quality fruits.
So the fruits were barely edible ... but if you were a goat or a goose ...
The first tree was probably (because of the country) of the smyrna type  and needed the pollen from the capri-fig to fruit.
The old lad didn't want to go through all those details and just told you not to eat the caprifig's fruit - He thought, you'll call him mad because some people just don't trust other's saying and don't understand that some trees require pollination - some even require cross-pollination with a different strain ( but that is mainly for apples, pears, cherries... ).

So figs of the type ficus carica are safe to eat... Some just taste like cardboard ... So safe, but not tasty ...