Figs

The fig tree grows vigorously and produces lavishly in most parts of South Carolina. The Spanish planted fig trees on Parris Island when they settled “Santa Elena” there in 1566. It is an open question whether Natives secured fig cuttings from the Spanish or from the English in Virginia, who began planting figs in 1621 around Jamestown. Whichever the source, Natives began planting the countryside of Carolina, so that Robert Sanford in 1666 encountered “some store of figge trees very large and very faire,” on the banks of the Broad River in South Carolina. Two qualities of the fig recommended them to settlers and Natives: they could produce fruit without sexual fertilization, and they grew large quickly. The intentional importation of European varieties of figs to gauge which performed optimally in Carolina dates from the garden experiments of Eleanor Laurens in 1760s Charleston.