Hello fellow plant lovers! I'm currently attempting to propagate fig trees from cuttings taken from an old mystery tree. I hope these photo links work =/ I'm new to these sites. 

My husband and I live in California - Sonoma County - Zone 9b

Our mystery tree:

https://imgur.com/gallery/pYM1P/new


I'm also seeing two different leaf patterns on my cuttings

https://imgur.com/a/mxQrm

In the years that my husband and I have lived here we have never been able to eat the fruit from this tree. I was told the fruits rot and fall off the tree before they get ripe, this was true. The next year we tried watering and feeding the tree. No pruning though because I have no idea how to do that. Yet. The fruit got better looking but never edible.

With the drought in California it was hard to justify giving water to a tree that was uncertain to produce. I hope to find out what this giant tree needs, I feel a serious pruning and feeding and more water could do the trick. All advice welcome. 

Any ideas on what this fig is? Are there multiple trees here? I'm really new to this. I'm rooting the cuttings as a learning experience. Not exactly sure what to do next with the cuttings but I feel like I need to get them into some kind of growing medium pretty quick.


All advice welcome. Thank you for reading!

First of all, welcome to the forum!

I would definitely recommend getting the cuttings into some sort of water retaining medium (coconut coir is my personal favorite). But the differing of the leaf patterns is rather odd. My best guess would be that you have two different grafted varieties on your parent tree and ended up unknowingly taking cuttings from both grafts. Then again, they may be the same variety just one's slower and has less developed leaves. As far as the fruit goes it sounds like you have an inedible caprifig. This just means your tree is a male that produces dry unpalatable fruit full of pollen. This is just my take on it I could be wrong.

Good luck with the cuttings.

We've been suspecting Caprifig. Thanks for the recommendation on the medium - I will check that out!

JuneBug,

Welcome to the forum
Congratulations! 
Reading your news,  I have few doubts that  you live in fig Paradise!
Your tree is a Caprifig (NOT EDIBLE!) and its looks tell us that it's of good quality. A fantastic opportunity for a fig starter !!
You have at your door step the critical tool to help you to grow ALL the very best world figs (the Smyrnas, and the San Pedro main crops,

The fruit you see on your tree is the Mamme crop or the winter fig and the hundreds of round capsules inside are its modified female flower - the galls-.
Inside every gall there is a wasp developing through its metamorphosis stages
Born by mid/late autumn these Mamme figs shall be ripe and ready this coming March

By that time your great tree will be full of nice leaves and thousands of new figs of the next crop
- the Profichi -  and these Profichis will grow with the following generation of wasps inside and  by May/June - these Profichi will gradually ripen and squadron after squadron of diligent little wasps will emerge from their insides smeared with golden pollen to caprificate ALL receptive figs they find.

You need your weather  to keep nice along the coming months with no excessively hot days.
If you need to go into full tech details I suggest you to go through the following pages
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/gallfig.htm

Good luck
Francisco
Portugal

Funny, I'm new at this but the minute I saw the pic of the fig, I thought the same thing!  Which, by the way, I would love to have a cutting of if you are willing to part with a few, please PM me.

Welcome to the F4f Forum, Junbug!!!

Baby fig plants often have very different leaf forms on the same plant, just like yours has.  As they mature some settle on a predominant leaf type and some maintain some variety.  It's nothing unusual.

I've seen evidence of fig wasps almost as far North as Oroville and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they went further North.  There are lots of examples of caprifigs in the Niles, CA area in fig histories so we know zone 9b can support the wasp.  

I'm so glad I joined this forum! You guys have already been so helpful and informative! If I'm successful with the cuttings I will let y'alls know. 

My grand-daughter helps me to keep track of my paper work piles,
translating texts, picture taking also reads and organizes mails
and messages..
Last night after reading your post, she came to me and said:

.../ -Why don't you tell the lady that she can make good$$$ selling her figs at the farmers market, ...and elsewhere ? By June there will be plenty of the good ones with millions of Bugs to pollinate the caducous figs .../

she is absolutely right

Told her that you seem to know it from the very beginning
Otherwise your member ID would not be 'JuneBug'

Good luck
Francisco
Portugal

Do you think you'd be willing to share a twig or two with an Oaklander? I'd love to try to attract fig wasps.