After couple days of heavy rain, I purposely left a few figs on my trees. I inspected them after the rain. Here's what I found.

• Hardy Chicago, no spliting, the figs look okay, but they weren't fully ripe which also helped.
• Sal's Did not split, but the ripe ones tasted watery and lacked flavor.
• Bataglia, badly damaged, almost rotten.
• Black madeira Split open, while still unripe
• Red Lebanese, Remained in good shape, while ripe it taste excellent sweet.
• Brooklyn White Some splitting
• Syrian unk. 7 Split badly
• Brooklyn Dark No splitting
• Dark Portuguese, no splitting
• Adriatic no splitting but the skin got some mold spots. Tasted good.

I can add to that:

Violette de Bordeaux - bad vertical splitting, but still tasty
LSU Purple - really bad vertical splitting
Neri (Al Lerner) - vertical splitting

Armenian - no splitting... and almost no taste since it turned cold

C.J.

Cynthia:Your Violette will adapt to rain in the next years.
I had the biggest surprise yesteday evening when I harvested a couple of Violette and couple of Aubique petite (related cultivar),that were super tasty and no splitting or watery.
We had 8 inches of rain this week.
In 2008,splitted very bad Eye to peduncle,and 2009,were watery,but now when the trees are 5 years old ,it seem they adapted to the rain and local condition.
This information is so important,that I should open a new posting about this miracol!!!!!!!.
I am so happy,about it because these 2 figs can be best of all of them,if they adapt to rain.
In fact I was complaining the worse about them in 2008,if one could get to those posts.

Herman,

I too am seeing Violette getting better. It seems to be a very good fig choice for in ground or pot culture in most growing areas. I am sure that I get more heavy rain than you usually get because of the tropical storms and hurricanes that we get in the Gulf of Mexico.  Violette does real well in my area. The most damage I see is sometimes splitting across the eye. But not all Violette figs will do that.  Even when they sometime split, the fruit beetles do not bother. Also, the rich Violette flavor does not get diluted as much as other cultivars. There is a lot of flavor in the skin of Violette and a really good tasting cultivar to eat whole. I HIGHLY recommend it to the people in my area.

FYI......This is my definition of the words "SPLIT" and "CRACKED" when describing the fruiting characteristics of a fig.  The skin is "cracked", I mean that the skin has separated but the crack only goes down to the fig meat and has not yet exposed the pulp which lies just under it. The fruit beetles cannot get to the pulp if the meat is still intact. By meat, I mean the white part that lies between the outer skin and the juicy pulp that lies within. When I refer to a "split", to me that means "the skin and meat" has completely separated and the inside pulp is fully exposed to insects and those nasty fig souring fruit beetles. A skin crack is completely harmless and is usually a good indicator of a ripe fig.  A split fig is bad because its sweet pulp is completely vulnerable to souring insects.

Dan

Herman and Dan,

That is really good news, since I really like VdB.  I wonder if I am seeing so much cracking because I have it in a pot rather than in the ground where the water could run off more quickly.  Just a thought.

C.J.

CJ, the flavor of VdB is hard to beat. IMO everyone should grow this cultivar because it seems to perform well in most climates. Baud recommends it for most areas of France. As good as it tastes, however, there are other cultivars that taste so good they will drop you to your knees. Col de Dame blanc is hands down the best tasting fig I have ever eaten. And it handles very heavy rains without any problems. I have eaten some excellent CdDb figs from my tree when it was standing in an inch of water the previous day.  

FYI, I grow all of my figs in the ground. I had the following cultivars ripening during a period of very heavy rain in my yard. The following cultivars were able to handle it without much damage or flavor loss:

Hardy Chicago, Dark Portuguese, Sal (EL), GM#11, Gino's, White Triana, Scott's Yellow, Smith, LSU Golden Celeste (the amber pulp strain that looks like a regular Celeste fig). A lot of my other cultivars were not ripening at that time of heavy rain so I could get no data on them.

Adriatic (Strawberry) will split during heavy rains. It will handle light rains without any problem. I did not have any J H Adriatics ripening at that time. Both are very good tasting figs which extend the fig season in my area.

Dan

I grow in containers and if watered and then a good rainfall they are more prone to split than an inground one. 
Here is post from last season a cold one here like 2008, in 2008 we had record rainfall of 7 inches in a 24 hour period.
 EL.Sals split and Hardy Chicago as well but not quite as bad .

As a note it was late in season here in 2009 , notice what i mention about Violet de Bordeaux . Not mentioned last season at 3 seasons old it produced ripe figs for first time and this season they were best taste in yard.
Yes its a very good fig and 1 day hope to compare to my Coll de Dama Negra

Martin,

Up North, do the fig leaves change colors like the other trees do--You said some are turning.  Also, what kind of spots do some of the leaves get?

Down here, my fig tree leaves just start looking nasty, curl up and fall off.  Just like most of the other trees' leaves do.

noss

Hi Noss,
yes my fig leaves turn colors as weather cools and they get rust spotting late each year due to too humid dewey nights . Some leaves get brown then black dotted spotting while others get brown then black around the edges or both.
If frost comes quickly yes leaves will just curl and fall off beforehand.
I never worry about the leaves doing this it happens each late season in my yard.

I don't worry about the rusty leaves drying up and falling off either.  Curiously, the rust hit the Celestes really late this season.  They are only now getting rust spots and most of the baby trees are still fine.  Maybe it's because it's been so dry this year.  I noticed that the leaves on the Celeste tree out front which were under the overhang of the carport roof are almost clear of rust, but its leaves that were out in the open and where the netting rested on them are more rusty now.  I didn't spray any of the trees with copper sulphate.

noss