The interesting process of caprification is thus described by Professor Hugh N. Starnes of the Georgia Experiment Station:
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Fig. 51.—Fig Tree Thirty Feet High near Yuba, California.—(Photograph by H. W. Wiley.)
"In the base or false ovary of the gall flowers, which are merely degenerate pistillates, the egg of the Blastophaga grossorum or fig wasp—a minute insect—is deposited and develops to maturity. The wingless males emerge first and, with their powerful mandibles, cut into the flowers containing the female wasps, partially release them, and impregnate them. The gravid females shortly complete the liberating process and, being winged, at once seek to escape for the instinctive purpose of laying their eggs. They emerge from the eye of the caprifig, after squeezing through the mass of pollen-covered anthers protecting the exit, and seek other fruit in which to lay their eggs.
