Hmm...same tree...left one last year...right one this year?

The difference ?

Humor
One on left pollinated by a drunk fig wasp that fell asleep on the job.

Humor
One on left i give to someone i dont care for.
One on right i give to someone that might enjoy light color figs.

More Humor
One is bigger than the other.

A Guess
one on left ripened earlier in season a breba.
One on right is main crop. From same plant.

Obviously you cut the left half early and left the right half longer on the plant to get fat and ripe !!?

From same tree, same day, both are fully ripe. Both are edible, and actually have very similar flavor. Entire tree is the same variety, no grafting.

That's bizarre. There are a lot of other tree fruits that offer a broad diversity of fruit types among cultivars. But I can't think of any other one that varies as much from one place to another, season to season, and branch to branch.

I have seen this before on my trees.  It's almost like the flower parts don't swell up completely and start to "pump juice"

It is my opinion, not soes as I can prove it, that this is the affect that caprification had on this variety. Since I get some wasp interaction, and trees needing it do not all get 100% caprification, I am assuming that this may be some of the ones on this tree that were caprified, even though it was not a requirement for the fruit to persist.

The fruit on the trees at USDA/UC Davis must be assumed to be caprified because of the presence of the wasp. So pictures taken of fruit there.may not be representative of performance at your location.

Jon,

Is the part of the tree the smaller one came from showing signs of FMV?  I have a couple of trees which seem to be "partially" affected by FMV.  The fruit is less plentiful, smaller and is more likely to be deformed.

~james

Tree probably has FMV, but doesn't seem to be an issue  growth is normal.

My opinion is like Jon Opin ion:The small ugly color is an unpolinated fruit,the larger more colorfull interior is a polinated fruit.
The larger one I bet has more flavor than the smaller one too.
Caprification makes better fruit flavor in many cases.