Michelle,

I've never had that happen to any of my figs. It's a puzzle to me what caused it, and what to do now.

Is it possible the truck was bent somehow and that's what caused it to plit?

Young fig wood is very flexible until a couple years of growth rings strengthens the wood, and makes it more rigid as it gets wider in diameter.

The exposed fig tissue looks very healthy. That's a good thing.

I think all that can be done at this point is expect the fig tree to build up as it grows and heal itself, and growing normally. Fig trees are tough, and extremely resilient.

I see on the tag that the tree came from Stark Bros. Why not send Stark your photo and ask them what they think happened to cause the truck to split. Then ask them what you can do at this point.

Moses

Michelle from past readings briefly i can recall figs and plants that go dormant each season go through a cellular transformation something to do with the cells/sugar/carbohydrates and water attaching to cells and being able to withstand lower than freezing temps somehow but it was beyond my memory to recall .

Throughout the many years i had 2 plants do what your experiencing. Both same season years back and recall a lot of rain at end of season then sudden cold which may or may not have harmed the cycle of the cellular transformation that takes place as a plant goes into dormancy. Mine showed the bad crack on trunk going down below soil line as yours displays and happened not at beginning of dormancy but midway through winter months observed slowly splitting from the inside outwards.

In the end one plant was discarded and one had a branch air layered and then discarded.

They split from inside outward which leads me to believe that something inside the cell structure went haywire but far from having any actual knowledge as only an expert in plant biology could answer.

Martin

I don't know about the fig process of dormancy and what the sugars/cells go through but it sounds alot like regular freezing behavior of most liquids. Like freezing a bottle of water, the resulting ice expands and takes up more space than it did as a liquid. From what Martin said about his split trees, if it rained alot before the end of the season and suddenly became cold, I assume the tree created alot of sap and was in the process of sending it to its roots for dormancy. But instead of getting enough time to send all its sap into the roots before cold temperatures hit, the sudden cold arrived when the sap was not fully in the roots. Maybe it made the traveling sap in the cells of the trunk freeze and expand more than it can handle? That's just my guess at what could cause a split.

How warm was your garage where you kept the fig? I just googled "fig dormancy sap" and got a link to a google book that describes sap tension and pressure based on air temperature. It mentions the pull and push of sap in the wood as well as what causes sap to move from the inner areas of the trunk to the outer areas.

So it looks like the tree can move the sugar sap outwards to intentionally generate pressure during low temperatures for repair.It says that when the temperatures are lower, the efflux or the movement of the carbohydrates outwards is much greater. But when its warmer, sugars move inwards to become reabsorbed for bud break.

Sorry I hope this helped. It doesn't really explain why the sap moved this way in your tree but I enjoyed looking for the information. I guess my theory about expanding because of freezing was wrong then!