Vista Black Mission.

Jon, this is my favorite time of the year on the fig forum where i get to see your pictures and others of ripe figs as mine are of course a good month behind and i just get antsy at this point.
You sure have a nice bounty there to enjoy , what beautiful figs and hope they taste good for you. Thanks for the taking the time to post em, you sure take some fine pictures and i look forward to MORE PICS!

Jon, you have made my stomach start to growl. Man, I'd love to bite into those. Great looking figs and nice picture.

Dan_la, you sure get up early. I though I was the early bird.

Martin:
Hope you get enough heat for ripes next month! We, here in NW AR are having a *real* summer so far but, I'll be lucky to be enjoying anything @ all before Oct. I've 50 trees in the ground, most in a Hoop House but only my +2 year olds are showing initials: Negronne, Genoa, Encanto, Blue Celeste, and Hardy Chicago.
A co-worker passed this along to me from this month's magazine:
http://www.bonappetit.com/tipstools/ingredients/2008/08/figs

Thanks Jon!
Dreaming of fresh figs...
Stephen

Background is black felt, and then photoshopped to full black.

The tree is 20+ years old, kept to about 10' tall. It had always been my favorite of the 4-5 trees I had. I set out to find a couple more good ones like it, and in the process have collected about 500 different varieties. There are some better tasting ones, such as Black Madeira, but Vista is still a fabulous tasting fig, near the top of the list and a good, consistent producer every year. Beatable, but barely.

It is not really a "Black Mission" fig. DNA at USDA/UC Davis says that it is the same as their Violette de Bordeaux. There are many Black Mission strains, however, and I have picked out one from among the many which I think is the standout Black Mission. It goes by the name "Black Mission NL". I still have a few other Black Mission trees, but they do not compare. I had my first fruit off of a new BM tree that I got cuttings of in 2007. Surprise, it is actually a Brown Turkey. More help in the confusion of fig names.

Jon if i may,
where does that mission actually originate from where overseas if at all.
Also how to you water so many plants or do you let mother nature do it.
Im sorry if this was asked in the past of you.

Black Mission was supposedly brought here by the Franciscan missionaires who came with spanish colonization in the 1700s. Don't know beyond that.

We havemn't had rain here since January, if I remember correctly.  One a lot of hoses, and a lot of drip irrigation. Bananas take more time and water than the figs.

If we only can spend as much time eating figs as the time we spend watering.

Yes I am happy too. Last 1-2 weeks I harvested ~half-dozen
off both my Vista and VdB (presumed as breba). By initial
(development) they looked different; but at harvest time,
I had some difficult time remembering which was which;
surely there are close cousins.
At the end, both had a more dark/bluish skin;
and to my poor taste buds, same.

Jon, by any chance was there a recent frost in SD,
or is it a camera hiccup about that whitish skin hue,
(or it my czazy POS-PC again)?

OK, gorgi, I'll go with the frost excuse.

No, taking pix of dark skinned figs in a challenge. Depending on the lighting, they tend to look either somewhat whitish, or a fluorescent bluish purple. The problem is magnified when concentrating on more than a single fig. The camera perceives them a little differently than our eyes. Not sure why.

As far as VdB vs Vista, and throw in Negronne and Petit Negri (whichever of several spellings you want use), I am getting pretty close to concluding that they are all the same. I know that is heresy, but after watching several different plants of all of these, I am being led to conclude that they are all the same, though they may have some very slight variations or personalities. My Vistas this year are as big an Negronne ever gets, and far bigger than Vista has even been. One of my Vista plants has bluish-green unripe figs just like one of my VdBs has - it has never looked like that before. They all have the same leaves (yes, I will defy anyone to tell which leaf came from which variety). I have 20+ Celeste "variations" which all test the same, DNA-wise, at USDA. I can somewhat tell them apart, sometimes, but the wide diversity of "looks" all show up on each tree  during the season, even if they have predominantly one style or personality. Yet, with rare exceptions, when I see any of them, I know they are Celestes, regardless of how much a particular fig diverges from what might be considered as the prototypical Celeste look.

See http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=3606425 Which I guess I will finally provide an answer to, tonight. Those are both from my "Santa Margherita" tree, picked about one inch apart on the same branch. Yes, one is probably 12-24 hours less ripe than the other, but the extra time will not make them look the same. So what made the difference? Climate? Water? Soil? Fertilizer? Neighbor's dog? They are as equal in culture an any two figs can be, but one might as well be blond and the other brunette. even though they are twins.