Bananas for Scale
Fig

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Fig

Not actually a fruit, but an inside-out flower pollinated by tiny wasps/Food & Drinks

The common fig (Ficus carica) is not technically a fruit but a syconium: a fleshy, hollow structure with the flowers lining the inside. Each fig is essentially an inside-out bouquet of tiny flowers, and the crunchy bits inside are not seeds but the actual fruits (drupelets). Figs have a remarkable mutualistic relationship with fig wasps: a tiny female wasp enters through a narrow opening (the ostiole), pollinates the internal flowers, lays her eggs, and dies inside. The fig then digests the wasp with an enzyme called ficin. Figs are among the earliest cultivated fruits, with evidence of cultivation dating back to about 9400 BCE.

Measurements

Fruit length5 hundredths m
2 millionRibosomes
9.1 thousandthsParking space lengths
Fruit diameter4 hundredths m
2.9 hundredthsBroom lengths
8.3 tenthsDominoes
Fruit mass (fresh)5 hundredths kg
9.1 quadrillionthsTeaspoons of neutron star
1.7 thousandthsGolden retrievers
Ostiole diameter2 thousandths m
2.2 thousandthsUmbrellas
5.2 hundredthsSilver dollar diameters
3.8 hundredthsMatchbox lengths
Energy per fig (fresh)155,000 J
1.6 trillionFalling snowflakes
3,100Toddler kicks

About 37 kcal

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