Ok so I want your input into this conversation blb and I were having on the phone. 

Just in mt etna figs we have

I think that there are at definitely 1000's of varieties and possibly even 10's or 100's of thousands.  Every seedling that grows from pollinated fruit is a brand new variety.  So in places where the wasp is present new varieties are constantly being created, even if many of them are wild plants that are not in cultivation.  It's hard to say how many unique varieties are actually grown and traded by man.  As you point out many named varieties are duplicates.  But I wouldn't be surprised if in a place like Portugal or Italy or Turkey or Greece if there are hundreds or even thousands of unique varieties in cultivation.  Figs have been grown in those countries for a very long time.

Joe you are correct there are many unique figs in the world, however, a single population from each area where they grow naturally will yield trees that are so closely related in nearly every case that dna testing is the only certain way to know the differences. Changes in nature as a rule, happen very slowly and infrequently. Of course there are exceptions, occassional jumps like a sport (most occur on man made hybrids) but they are few when you consider the total size of a population. When man interferes through hybridizing then you get many differences in seedlings, left to nature the differences can take eons. Take a fig out of it's natural environment, plant it in a very different environment, how long before nature creates the conditions for the plant to actually change it's dna to adapt to the new conditions? If it can stay alive long enough to reproduce that is. We all know our trees are adaptable to different environments, I'm not talkiing about that, I'm talking about significant differences in appearance and growth habit and taste etc. caused by very different growing conditions. A fig native to Israel vs a fig native to say Italy for example will have significant differences in dna, but those figs growing near each other in each location will be nearly the same. Most plants will intergrade as they naturally progress from location to location, differences appear as the plant reproduces and spreads, but those differences take time. We speed that all up when we breed for specific characteristics.

I like the old Italian farmer down the street from me. I asked him how many different Italian figs there are and he replied 3.. There are Red, White and Black the rest are just watered down versions of these figs.. Look at the names most are just places the main tree is or the owners name. If you get into the Hybridized man made figs you get a number. I like to think back in the day of Adam and Eve there were only three fig trees in the garden. Take a Brown turkey grown here in my yard in NJ plant another tree from a cutting in Florida it will taste different and grow different simply because of the mineral content in the soil. Something like Pizza dough has a different flavor depending on the water used.. Same with Bread and so on... It is amazing how trees get their names and in the end they are all so closely related. I dont know if is ever possible to get a true cultivar count or identification it is all in the mind of the collector...
Now for a serious question do hunters wear camouflage so the deer cant see them or so they look cool standing at their truck?