Bobbi,

I waited to see if someone in your zone would reply since none of my fig trees will ever reach their growth potential (north east). My guess is your celeste could reach as tall as 50 feet in your zone. The link below may help.

Good Luck!
Vinnie

Here is a link that might be useful: Fig - Ficus carica

Biggest Celeste I have seen is about 9ft tall. I have seen other fig trees that grew to that size in my zone. I know of a guy here who does prunning using the chainsaw on his mini fig orchard of about 200 trees. If trees are too big, he just cut it down & they re-sprout. I have also seen pictures of fig trees with large spreading canopy in this forum.

Does anyone on the forum know of some giant 30-50ft tall fig trees in the United States? It would be interesting to see just where Ficus carica does best in this land of ours.....

In the Clear Lake area, I know of at least two trees which are prolly in the 40-50' tall range. Also, Maas Nursery in Seabrook (probably the birth place of 'Banana') has a 'Celeste' tree which is about 20' tall.

One of the places that took it in the shorts from IKE is San Leon (about 10 miles south of Seabrook and 15 miles SE of Clear Lake). This is kind of on the south side of the area which use to be heavily planted with fig orchards in the early 1900s. Many of the older/larger fig trees in the area may have perished with the storm.

~james

Check out the pictures of some big ole Celeste fig trees in this 1919 Ag Department Bulletin 1031. It also is a very good read.......

Dan

Here is a link that might be useful: Bulletin on Fig Growing in the South

Below is a photo of two large Mission fig trees in California from one of the old Condit books. The arrow points to a man at the base of the tree. What is your guess as to the height of the trees? My best estimate is 80+ feet. The bottom photo is an unrelated photo on the same page of a fig tree with unusual nodal swellings.

I saw a fig tree last year near Hot Springs AR in a botanical park. It had a plaque on it that said "Texas Everbearing Fig". It was about 25-30 ft tall. I have never seen one that big that far north before. Probably zone 7b? Picture shows maybe 2/3rds of the trunk.

Thanks so much for the great info guys. I'll proceed and plant thinking it has the potential to get very large. I doubt I'll still be living here to see it, but perhaps the people who follow us will appreciate not having to cut it off the house constantly!