Ficus carica Fig

A deciduous shrub or small tree that is native to the eastern Mediterranean and south-western Asia, long cultivated for its sweet, succulent, edible fruit. It has been grown in Britain since the 16th Century and was first recorded in the wild in 1814. It produces viable seed occasionally in Britain and these can be dispersed by birds, but most plants probably originate from discarded fruit or sewage waste. Accordingly, mature Fig trees are occasionally found on the banks of rivers into which raw sewage has been discharged in the past. It has a clustered distribution in southern Britain with hot spots in the Thames Valley, Cornwall, the west Midlands and to a lesser extent in parts of south Wales. It is almost exclusively lowland with a scattered distribution in West Glamorgan. A large fig tree establiahed on the banks of the River Neath near Neath town is at least 6o years old and probably much older.

Neophyte