I realised that again, I got the numbering wrong at some point and what was 8.8 last week should have been 8.9.
Fig Plants
The fig is the fruit of a plant called Ficus, sometimes called the Fig tree. Fig (genus Ficus) is a soft, sweet fruit. Its skin is very thin and has many small seeds inside of it. There are more than 850 species of Ficus known.
Wild fig trees first grew in Africa and West Asia and South Asia and around the Mediterranean Sea beginning probably about a hundred million years ago, in the time of the dinosaurs.
By about 11,000 years ago, people in West Asia had already begun to farm fig trees. Farmed figs may be the first kind of food that anybody farmed, even before wheat and barley.
The fruits can be eaten when ripe and when dried. Figs grow in warm climates. Many figs are grown for their fruit, though only Ficus carica, the Common Fig, is cultivated to any extent for human consumption. Sometimes, this is made in a jam. The fig flowers are pollinated by very small wasps which crawl through the opening in search of a suitable place to lay eggs. Without this, fig trees cannot reproduce by seed. In turn, the flowers provide a safe haven and nourishment for the next generation of wasps.
Aside from the nutritional aspects, figs can also be used for many other purposes, such as treating mouth ulcers by chewing the leaves, treating kidney stones, being mashed and used to treat acne, early stages of chicken pox and many more.
Hooks & Rumours
- A number of plants have been dying off at an alarming rate on farms across the country. It seems to be a pathogen that is only targeting Ficus plants and experts believe it to be artificial.
- A new type of so-called “super-fig” has been bred, with almost 10 times the nutritional value of a normal fig but requiring much more reduced resources. So far this has only been grown on a farm in a highly guarded area.
- A competition is being held in someone hometown to make the best fig jam and one of the party has been asked to be a judge there.
- Some of the wasps that pollinate the figs have become hyper-aggressive and are attacking any creature that gets near their fig tree.
- A country is claiming to have the oldest fig tree alive at almost 8000 years. Scientists are on their way to investigate this claim but are being denied entry as the land is considered holy and only the priesthood is allowed to even touch the tree.
Inspired by: Ficus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus
Volume 7 of the compiled and updated Campaign Chunks is available at DrivethruRPG.com
