There, the wasps fly around searching for a place to lay their broods. In the spring, however, the pregnant females are drafted into service by fig growers who transport them to female (calimyrna) fig trees where they are hung in baskets. Spend in a day in California's San Joaquin Valley with a lady wasp, whose frustrations will make yours look pale by comparison." The female wasp's frustrations, it turns out, are primarily man-made: Living inside male (caprifig) trees, female wasps lay their eggs in his seeds. Several years ago, a National Geographic Magazine cover story, "The Wasp that Plays Cupid to a Fig," began: "I have a cure for that sometime feeling that you're getting nowhere. Calimyrnas are the only fig trees that require pollination. Figlets, the firm's largest-selling item, are miniature missions. The three major varieties of figs, Jue explains, are the black mission (small and jet black), calimyrna (larger, nutlike and a descendant of the Turkish Smyrna) and the Adriatic (less distinctive and primarily used for manufacturing into fig paste). In the company's conference room, Jue shows a promotional film entitled "The Dried Fig: The Nearly Perfect Fruit" and then conducts a fig-and-tell show. It is also where a host of processed fig products is made, including the fig paste for the famous Fig Newton cookie. Most of the dried figs will find their way to Valley Fig Growers' processing plant, a cooperative of 55 growers that packages dried figs under the Blue Ribbon and Old Orchard labels and for Sun-Maid, its sister cooperative. Since all figs do not ripen, dry and fall simultaneously, fresh figs - plucked ripe from the trees - are also being harvested now. The figs, already losing moisture, will be further dried on trays in the sun or in dehydrators. All of those dried figs are also grown here in the San Joaquin Valley, whose fertile floor will be blanketed with fallen fruit beginning this week. It is fitting then, that virtually all of the dried figs in this country are processed within a 10-mile radius of here. Figs may not have been around when looks were handed out neither will this city receive honors for urban beauty. "Fig consumption has been flat for the past 10 years," he laments. As vice president of industrial sales and technical services for Valley Fig Growers, the country's largest processor of figs, Jue knows how hard it is to glamorize the homely dried fruit. Even this is a tough contest to win if you sell figs. Gary Jue's biggest competition is prunes.
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