I am new to figs and have a question.  What is required to make a fig an official designation true to the name?  What is with the Unk....that has a name behind that?  I just want to learn here and appreciate the folks on this forum.

Good question!

I think the unk stands for unknown.  There's a thread that just got bumped yesterday about "another small black fig" that a forum member found in Atlanta a couple years back.  For a long while, most everyone thought it might be an Ischia Black....a rare find in good health.  I know a few cuttings of that one are circulating around, but no one actually knows for sure what the fig is.  It's been referred to as "Jason's Unk" and "Jason's unknown ischia black."

Basically, the Unk designation just means that the fig is unidentified, and the names with it correlate with who found it and what they think it might be.

Brett is right.  Unless you send the cutting to get dna tested, it is considered unknown.  I assume it is officially named if it doesn't match an existing strain.  I don't know the official naming process.  Jon could tell us though.

Fig naming gets to be contentious business. Some people declare they have a new fig variety right off the bat (generally considered poor form) while others use the UNK moniker and usually a person's name, geographic location, or the suspected variety to label it.

Like Frank said, it's hard, if not impossible, to truly determine a figs ID without DNA testing. Some people (not me), can ID more common varieties (Celeste, BT, Brunswick, etc), but due to phenotypic and climate variation it's difficult without years of experience and growing varieties side by side.

I don't think there is any official process since the commercial market for figs is pretty small. I guess there are community recognized names and those from UC Davis.

There is no Societe Internationale Pour les Noms de Figues.  Get Pons, Axier, Jon, Bass and someone from the middle East together and make it happen.   :)

If you want to test the DNA of an "unknown" fig in hopes of making it a "new named variety or cultivar", where would you send the genetic material? What would it cost? And whom gets to name it assuming that it is truly unknown?

Not that I'm planning on doing this, yet I am very curios, and it makes for great conversation.

Scott

UC Davis will run some DNA tests but they don't run the whole genome.  They use a bunch of markers that cover about 66% of the genetic variability of figs.  That's not enough to determine if your fig is a unique variety.  Fig names are a vast wild west of claims and counter claims. 

There are some varieties which are fairly distinctive, such as Panache, which makes them easy to identify. Beyond that, because figs respond, often dramatically, to most elements of their environment, visual identification is very difficult. If you looks at the pix of the collection at WEO (USDA at Davis) over the years, (the last couple of visits are not ready yet), you will see the wide variations in the fruit from year to year, esp. in skin color.

You can do DNA testing, which will tell you if it matches a variety whose DNA has already been tested, but there are few that have been tested, outside of collections such as the USDA collection.

After you have matching DNA, you may still not have the entire story. The level of DNA testing may not disclose nuances which are observed in different "variants" or "strains" of the same variety, which can affect fruit size, color, etc.

Many figs are "discovered" in backyards and other places and there is no history of what there name is. They get a variety of names depending on the "discoverer". I choose to name mine for the streets they were found on, to give them a semblance of a provenance. Some use Unknown with a town name or other moniker. There aren't any rules. Probably the only really bad approach is to think that you can be certain of what you unknown is after comparing a few pictures and start calling it by that name. I have figs from east coast nurseries that the people I bought them from do not recognize when grown here in paradise.

In the end, if it tastes good, name it Tom, Dick, or Harry, but share some with me. I'm all about flavor.

Welcome to the "fun" that is figs.

Jon's explanation of fig identification is the best I have heard!  

Just to add IMO the old world names ring better for me.  They (many) represent the history of that fig where it was found growing and characteristics such as the type or taste.  
No disrespect intended to organizations like LSU and UC Davis (and seedlings) but I would venture that most figs in North America originated from old world cuttings. 
Therefore when naming an unknown I like to see it mapped back to its true name, location and include some descriptor of the fig of course it should also be qualified with the person naming it and Unk until accepted by the community. 

I like to number all my plants even the ones whit names. If I get 2 plants , same name but different source they will get different numbers followed by the name and source. The UNK also get a number followed by the location where I obteined them (some pretty interesting). It also makes it simple to mark pots and keep a spread sheet.

Jon,

Thank you for your description of the process. That definitely sheds a lot of light on how things work. It also raises some questions on their procedures, and why they only look at portions of the genome. It does make me wonder how many varieties are out there with different names that are actually the same variety and not a variant.

Sounds like a great adventure to embark on, to fully map and ID every variety and there variants.  I'm sure it will happen one day. 

Thanks everyone.  All of these names were becoming overwhelming and your responses are extremely helpful in understanding the process.