Please see K.R. Norman's note to Sn 5 in /Group of Discourses /published
by the Pali Text Society. He gives a detailed list of references to the
``non-flowering fig'' in Indian Literature. A further article by him
called ``Rare as fig flowers'' is found in his /Collected Papers/
published by the Pali Text Society.
M.B. Emeneau writes in his article ``The Strangling Figs in Sanskrit
Literature'' (California, 1949): ``The hundreds of species (600-1000) of
the genus /Ficus, /mainly tropical, possess the peculiarity that the
inflorescence is in the form of crowded, compact clusters of flowers
placed inside a fleshy stalk, and that pollination is effected by fig
wasps that develop from eggs laid in the gallflowers, one of the three
types of flowers found in the inflorescence. These propagative
arrangements, though they are of great interest to our botanists, seem
not to have been understood by the Hindus...''
Norman renders Sn 5 as ``That bhikkhu who has not found any essence in
existences, as one searching among fig-trees (does not find) a flower,
leaves this shore and the far shore as a snake leaves its worn-out skin.''
The /Udumbara /is named ``Clustered Fig'' in English, a translation of
the Latin name Ficus agglomerata, because of the clusters of figs on the
branches. One sees the Clustered Fig also occasionally in Sri Lanka
where I live. Its fruits are fairly large (the size of a large marble)
compared to most figs such as the Bodhi tree (the size of a pea) and are
like all figs, big or small, they are popular food for all sorts of
animals and sometimes also eaten by people like its cousin the
mediteranean fig. If you want to get an idea of what is meant then get a
fresh fig from a shop and slice it open. The seeds are on fleshy stalks.
On these stalks were earlier the flowers which would have been
pollinated by the young wasps leaving fruits and then laying their eggs
into others.