Hershey’s Famous Fig

June 16th, 2005

   The famous fig lives on.

The "Testa fig" growing happily in Hershey Gardens, June 2011.

   One of Hershey’s best known botanical landmarks – a 50-year-old fig tree that stands sentry at the corner of Hockersville Road and Route 422 – is no longer threatened by the specter of a non-fig-appreciating new owner with a chainsaw.

   It seemed like half of Hershey gasped last fall when the for-sale sign went up at the home of the fig owners, the Testa family.

   People feared what would happen to “THE TREE.”

   They called and they knocked on the door, urging the Testas to make sure any new owner promised not to cut down the beloved fig.

   Many of the town’s sizeable Italian community – which reveres figs as a fond (and tasty) link to the homeland – asked for cuttings.

   The Testas gave away several divisions. The family’s children transplanted others. And two big chunks of the mother plant were moved late last fall to special spots at Hershey Gardens… just in case.

   As it turns out, the Testas decided not to sell after all.

   “We plan to keep it in the family,” says Donna Testa, one of six children of Josephine and the late Emidio Testa, who moved there in the 1940s.

   The ironic thing is that all of the hacking away – trying to save offspring – almost killed the original. Only a vestige remains.

   “I think it was a shock to the plant,” says Testa. “It had grown in huge root clusters, but a lot of it was cut away. There are some shoots coming up now, though. There’s life in it yet.”

   This particular fig developed its near cult-like following largely because of its prominent location. It juts out into the busy intersection in a peninsula of the Testa’s front yard.

   Hershey Gardens horticulturist Barbara Whitcraft remembers the tree while growing up just down the street on Hockersville Road.

The Testa fig in its original Hershey home at the intersection of Hockersville Road and Route 422.

   “A lot of Italians grew up on Hershey’s west side,” she says, “and many of them have fig trees. But most of them are in back yards. This one is so visual to the public. This one is out front where everyone can see it, especially when it’s wrapped up in the winter.”

   The mummy-like wrapping is another reason why the “Testa fig,” as it’s known around town, became so well known.

   Figs aren’t hardy to central Pennsylvania’s climate. Without winter protection, they’d die.

   So every fall – right after the first frost browned the leaves – Josephine Testa would prune back the tree, bundle it up and wrap it tightly in plastic, much like a straitjacket.

   “Mom would insulate it with whatever she had – old carpets, old blankets, any kind of fabric, even corn husks,” says Donna Testa. “Then she’d put plastic over it to keep the moisture off.”

   “A lot of people didn’t even know what it was,” says Whitcraft, “but they knew it must be something special because every winter it was all bundled up.”

   Come May, the tree would be unwrapped like a late Christmas gift. By then, new signs of life already would be poking out.

   The luscious, golfball-sized, pear-shaped fruits would take forever to ripen.

   It’d be mid-September before the first few would turn from green to a purplish-brown.

   Some years the Testa fig would grant only a handful of fruits. Other years it would churn out a couple hundred.

   Every year, though, the six kids would fight over the spoils until frost would come and kill off whatever still-unripened fruits were left.

   “Nothing tastes like a fresh fig,” says Donna Testa. “It almost has a honey-like taste. The texture is fleshy and lush. It’s not like eating a dried fig.”

   It’s also a far cry from how most Americans know figs – smashed into a paste inside a Fig Newton. Figophiles will tell you that’s like comparing a freshly picked peach at the height of ripeness to a bowl of peach gelatin. It just ain’t the same.

   The Testas got their fig in the mid 1950s from cousin Corrado Valente, who had recently immigrated from Italy’s Abruzzo region to Philadelphia.

   They’re pretty sure the tree isn’t a direct Italian import but is probably a division from a tree whose roots reach back to Abruzzo – the Testas’ home region.

   The tree and its half-century of tender care is such a fond Testa family memory that Donna and her nieces a few years ago put together a personalized picture book called “The Lady and the Fig Tree.”

   In it, Testa concludes that although the winter bundling might have helped, it really was her mother’s warmth that nursed the fig through Hershey’s many biting winters.

   “She never fertilized, never sprayed any pesticides,” Testa says. “The main ingredient in her care that caused this tree to thrive, I truly believe, was love.”

 SIDEBAR 1

   Fig trees aren’t the prettiest looking plant in the landscape, but to many, they’re the most beloved.

Figs ripening on a tree.

   Common edible figs (Ficus carica) are members of the mulberry family that put out multiple woody stems that can grow 25 feet in warm regions.

   They’re not hardy to central Pennsylvania and so must be cut back and wrapped in insulation to survive our winter. Given that treatment, they can survive even into New England.

   Local fig-growers usually use stakes and fencing to build a bin around the plant, then insulate inside the bin and all around the plant with straw before wrapping the whole thing in burlap and plastic. Others wrap them in blankets and plastic.

   Young potted figs can be brought inside over winter, and young trees planted in the ground can be bent over so the branches can be covered by soil over winter.

   In the North, figs typically grow only 8 to 12 feet tall because of the annual cutback (done mainly to make winter wrapping easier). Over time, they’re usually wider than tall as the roots send out new shoots around the perimeter.

   The leaves are dark green and lobed, and the fruits ripen successively from mid-September through frost. Fruits turn from green to purplish-brown when ripe and are shaped like mini-pears of 1 to 2 inches in size. Rubbing a little olive oil on the bottom of green fruits is said to speed ripening.

   The fruits are sweet and somewhat seedy. They’re a good source of Vitamins A and C and have trace amounts of several important amino acids and minerals.

   Medicinally, they’re a mild laxative. Boiled with milk, figs supposedly help quell coughs. And the milk that oozes from cut branches can cause itching and rashes in some people but also is touted as a folk remedy for removing warts.

   Besides the tasty fruit, the tree itself is revered in many cultures.

   It’s a particular fixture in Italian culture, is treated as a sacred tree in India, is mentioned several times in Greek mythology and is even thought by some to be the tree that Adam and Eve defyingly ate in the Garden of Eden.

   Figs like alkaline soil (lots of lime), are seldom bothered by bugs and disease and are fairly drought-resistant, although occasional deep watering and fertilizing with a high-phosphorus fertilizer improves the fruit yield.