Hi there,
I am a newbie to figs and this forum. I bought a couple of Tissue cultured fig trees from a Florida Nursery
that specializes in Fruit trees. The two trees I got are Vilet De Bordeaux and arfe wicked small.

What do you experts think about tissue culture fig trees? Any pros and or cons compared to cuttings?

Here's the pointer to what I bought:

http://www.floridahillnursery.com/ficus-fig-tree-plants-c-8/ficus-carica-violet-de-bordeaux-fig-plant-tree-cold-hardy-heir-p-474

Thank You all,

/Frank

Frank,

Welcome to the forum and congrats on your new fig.
Many of us are on our 1st or 2nd year with tissue culture figs so I doubt there will be much info on them just yet. At least I haven't heard much.

The two I have were very small but if yours came in healthy then the size is not an issue. Once they get going they get going.
I do know mine do not show any signs of the "Fig Mosaic Virus" (FMV) so this may be one of the reasons why they grow so fast. The few other ones I had I gave away but were just as healthy.

As for producing fruit, that's a question awaiting answers. I just don't know yet.
And I think most of the collectors of tissue collectors figs will agree.

Hope you come around more often and contribute with us your experiences with the said fig or any other figs.

Hope other chime in.

Good luck

Hello Frank,
Welcome to the forum community.

I've only had 2 years experience with Tissue Cultured Figs. My plants were mostly ordered from Well Springs, but the actual supplier seems to be Agristart... http://www.agristarts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/plants.main/typeID/45/index.htm . Most of the trees have not produced any figs as yet, but I'm still hopeful. They seem to grow like seedlings, producing a lot of suckers and may take several years to actually start fruiting. In contrast, growing trees from cuttings usually yields figs in the first or second year.

Most of the trees seem healthy, but tissue culture doesn't remove Fig Mosaic Virus, there is a separate procedure that has to be performed. The Petite Nigra TC has FMV symtoms (Fig Mosaic Disease) but has already produced 4 figs on a 10" tall 7 month old plant (dormant for 2 months this past winter). I've left one fig on the plant and it should ripen this year, but I'm more interested it vegetative growth than in fig production at this stage. My Violette de Bordeaux (VDB) is growing quite well, and has not shown any visible FMD symtoms.
  

Good Luck.

my tissue culture hardy chicago is 15 months old but already has a bigger caliper
than my two n three year olds of other varieties.

i think this is due to not having fmv, but to be fair, it might be a varietal difference.

i'm really happy with my tissue culture. it has 3brebas on now. not bad for 15 months.

I bought a tissue culture Hardy Chicago 2 years ago, it grew nicely and produced a few figs last year. Over the winter it died back quite a bit, but I it is already off to a good start again now. So I would say just be patient.

Welcome to the forum Frank. I have a couple of "Blue Ischia" I got as tissue culture last year and they are both in 5 gallon buckets. They came really tiny and more than one to a pot. I seperated them and they are now in 5 gallon buckets. I believe one of them is developing some figs but we'll have to wait and see if it decides to really grow them.

If you search for the thread of that name you will find a ton of pictures of our little tissue culture trees. I think mine were about 4" tall when they got here.

Thank You all for your responses. I will keep you all posted on the progress with my Tissue Culture trees.  

Hello Frank-

Welcome to this forum.  I also bought some TC "Black Mission" trees from Florida Hill Nursery, two seasons ago.  The trees grew about 1 ft./year, and are now nearly two ft. tall.  This will be the third season.  No symptoms of FMV/D, and also no trace of figs either.  Trees seem happy and healthy, and I got what I paid for.

I also have another variety called "Olympian" that I bought from Wellspring Gardens, and the small TC trees have already put on many new leaves and close to 6 inches of new growth....in roughly one month.  I have some high hopes for this "new" variety, that was recently discovered.

For many of us on this forum, TC trees are still relatively new, and it will be a few years for the reviews to start rolling in.  I can't see why any TC trees should be any different, genetically, than the original trees, and they'll probably be indistinguishable in the coming years....I hope.


Da Bronx-Frank.....there's Franks from all over on this forum....  : )

My Hardy Chicago was a tissue culture bought from WellSprings. That was 2 years ago. It produced a few figs last season. This year I was hoping for a big crop, but the winter got most of it and so I am now starting over from 2 small stubs. Oh well, at least it is growing.

Here's a question that need to be answered.

Has anyone ever had one edible fig from tissue cultured fig trees?  I have not.

Tissue culture plant are great!  I love the science behind them.  Today, I have a few of them.  They grow nice and lovely.  About 5 years ago, I bought one tissuse culture Green Ischia fig tree in a 4 inch pot.  Man that tree grow so fast and so well, not a speck of FMV on it anyhwere!  It got so big that I had to plant it in my orchard.  After 3 years and no figs, I dug it up and burned it.

the first figs at age 6 months were icky. i  now have brebas at age 16 months tho. i'll tell you in a couple weeks, dennis

Back in post #10... Dennis asked an important question.  I'm glad he raised this question.  Do any of us have Tissue-Cultured trees long enough so that we can answer Dennis' question?  My T-C trees are at least 2-3 years away from producing any figs that might be edible.  Is there any evidence that shows TC trees are poor producers, or, late producers?  I, for one would like to know what to expect.  Who wants to waste time growing trees that won't produce.  I was going to get rid of 'Kathleen's Black' for this very reason, but then, the cold weather killed it, and saved me the trouble.  There wasn't a fig to be found on my bearing age, "KB" after three years.  I've had two-season cuttings, that were loaded with figs.

I have read that when trees are propagated from basal suckers, that these trees are also reluctant to produce figs.  Vegetatively identical, asexually produced trees, should have the same characteristics as the original trees.  What am I missing?  Can T-C fig trees be the Peter Pans of the fruit world....they won't grow up?

I'd like to know. My fig motto is: ...."Put out, or, get out"!


Frank

frank, they do produce, but im not sure of taste.
i got my HC at 3'' high. in 6 months there were 6 brebas that tasted yuk.
the tree was in my kitchen window.

i put that tree inground a month ago n it has 2 brebas now.

i have high hopes.

My Blue Ischia from the last year is humongous in size but no signs of figs yet. I am giving it one more summer!

Disclaimer:  I do not have a biology degree, just rephrasing what I think I read some where about TC plants vs cuttings.

Plants like figs that are started as either seedlings or tissue culture may have to grow and develop and go thru some time until they are sexually mature.  It may be normal for them to take a few years to start producing.  Remember, this is really the normal maturation process.  For example, you don't see oak trees making acorns untill they get to be a significant size.

Cuttings bypass that normal maturation process.  The cuttings are from older plants and the tissue in them, even though they start small, somehow retain the 'memory' - some type of cellular chemical or nuclear changes that make them already 'sexually mature' and are therefore able to fruit sooner.

We as fig growers are used to the faster production from cuttings and seem to think that is the 'normal' process, but ii is not!



Please correct me if I am out of line and you know more about how this works!!!

ed, i'm sure you're right. when i take a tomato cutting at end of season to plant in the house, i get tomatoes by xmas.
much faster than from a plant of the same size grown from seed. pieces of older plants remember, for sure.

Dennis, the Sequoia and Sierra trees that most of us have were started via tissue culture by Terestre (sp?) nursery (no defunct due to death of owner at a young age).  I've eaten ripe fruit from both.  But they were slow to produce fruit.  As I wrote in another thread when meeting with the fig breeder, tissue culture trees will often (but maybe not always) go through a period of a juvenile status before producing fruit.  The breeder brought this up when I mentioned that Sierra was very slow to fruit for me.  Based on discussions with the fig breeder, I suggest anyone growing a fig tree started via TC to remove all side branches and grow the tree into a straight trunk.  It may not fruit until it reaches 4' - 5' in height and might not ever fruit below that point.  If you want a shorter tree, airlayer the top and/or take cuttings from the top and start over!

The one T-C plant I have, a VdB, is growing along healthy and steadily upward. I figure, what the heck if it takes me 5 years to eat a fig off of the plant? After all, I paid only $7 plus a few bucks for shipping. Worse that happens, I give it away to a neighbor if it gets boring. It is possible I am Captain Hook and the T-C VdB is Peter Pan. I would attach a picture of it, but for some reason the forum keeps saying photos from both my camera and my i-phone are too large. I could use help with that one!  Joe

Thanks for the explanations. 

Interesting to read that figs, like humans can suffer from arrested development.  I remember reading, years ago, some postings by "tapla" where he endeavored to explain that the chronological age of a tree has nothing to do with our concept of age.  Different tissue from different sections of the plant, have different ages.  I wish I knew where to look for the "tapla" postings regarding the true age of fig trees.  For example, if one takes green wood cuttings from a 10 year old tree, and they root....are the new treelets also 10 years old?  What about if you air-layer a fruit-bearing branch that's 5 years old....how old is the resulting tree? 

So maybe tissue-culture cells come from the juvenile sections of a fig tree, and thus take longer to bear figs.

It's all beyond my comprehension.  Different branches having different ages....  I give up!


Frank

Harvey,
Thanks for reposting that info. Training as single stem also works well for cuttings.


Joe,
This Topic may help with resizing and posting your pictures. Good Luck.
http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=6831174

Thank you for answering Dennis' original questions, and adding to the general knowledge regarding Tissue-Cultured trees.  

So....these T-C trees can, and do, produce figs....after a few seasons.  That's nice to read.

So now, I'll sit back and wait for my "Olympian" trees to start producing figs....in a few years.... hopefully.


Frank

i got two purple magnolia figs from fh both tc trees. they grew rather quick and had figs on them in the second year. the problem is that purple magnolia which i was told by fh diid good in this area done even try to ripen until mid october. by then the weather here turns south and the fruit never ripens here.

One question that comes to mind, "do the nurseries doing tissue culture always take tissue from the same age of wood?"

It seems that TC fruit production has to do with the "memory age" of the tissue. So, if some people are having to wait a long time for TC trees to produce it could be that the tissue was obtained from a juvenile tree? And those (like me) whose TC trees produced in the second year were produced from tissue obtained from older trees?

This is nothing but an educated guess. Does anyone have any thoughts that might prove, or disprove, my hypothesis?