SAS,

I will see if I can get you more :)
Also I think I can also get you 2 green varieties to sample as welll.
The ichia verte supposely taste better than the celeste as I was told.

My Celeste in west central Fl zone 9b.

 
My Celeste came from a local feed and seed here in Statesboro, Georgia (near Savannah), but I think their supplier is the same one that supplies Lowes, so who know's if its really Celeste.  All the fruit ripen in July and very early August.  It's always my earliest fig.  The flavor is rich figgy and mellony.  I have another tree that was supposed to be a Black Italian that's very young that looks just like my Celeste that I'm pretty sure was miss IDed, but bares two crops (July and October) and tastes richer despite being a very young small plant.  

The birds like the fruit on the big tree from the feed and seed place the best of all my fig trees, and it's the only fig tree that has a serious problem with birds getting the fruit.  God bless.
Marcus

Just got back from a trip and this is how my four year old Celeste in a seven gallon pot (from Home Depot in TX) looked like today.
This one is among my earliest ripening and most productive trees. The fruit flavor was awesome last season and keeps improving.
Looking forward to a better fig season.

Sorry for being slightly off topic, but I thought Celeste was notorious for dropping figs.  How are you getting so many ripe ones?

Celeste will drop figs if stressed, high heat with infrequent watering etc. On the plus side, it usually is so prolific that even with some drops, you still get alot of figs. That's my experience here in the sweaty south anyways.

Hi Casey,

There is more than one strain of Celeste.
I had another Celeste and that one kept dropping its figs. This strain never dropped any figs and has been a constant producer since day one.

My Celeste was productive in a container and didn't drop at all but in ground grew much too vigorously and set hardly any figs or maybe they just dropped before I noticed them. I've also read observations from people that large Celeste trees also were unproductive when experiencing vigorous growth after freeze damage.

My perspective is that there is more or less only one Celeste and it can be moody.

I think that the older "Heirloom" trees may not have this problem.  I have taken cuttings from some trees that are 75-80 years old and the trees from these cuttings do not seem to have the dropping problem.  All my Celeste that I have, and have sold, come from these trees.

I don't know why some drop and some don't.