Malta Purple Red ('Elegant Berry, Exotic' flavor fig)
Formally known as GM-1.
It's medium to large sized figs are very similar in taste to St. Jerome, to Italian 258, and to Black Madeira, with an acidic berry flavor that is a little stronger than the other aforementioned cultivars, the strong sweet berry flavor has a slight touch of maple or honey, with a touch of molasses, that flavor will blow your mind, it's not as syrupy in texture as Black Madeira. It's figs are evenly roundish, mostly on the flattish side.
It's very cold hardy especially when it's been in the ground a long time, for example after 10 winters in the ground.
Some people find it unusually fast to bear fruit, yet for me it was it's 9th season in the ground when it had it's first edible fruit, it was bland yet had a powerful flavor, not bad for a first year of production.
In it's 11th season this cultivar is finally keeping a large crop for the first time, a main crop. One year when it was very young it did fill up with figlets, yet all those over 60 figlets aborted. This might have to do with this cultivars weak root system, that root system might be sensitive to some soil conditions. it's weak root system does not anchor as well as a majority of other fig trees do. It's figs most likely abort because it tries to produce too many figs for the fig tree's roots to handle so much fruit so tightly together. This cultivar does outgrow these problems eventually. This cultivar is a poor rooter during propagation as well. This cultivar has a collapsing nature to it for a long time, even the thick hardwood of this cultivar can not handle as much weight as other fig cultivars can at the same age. This cultivar needs pruning, and it's figlets thinned down to prevent collapsing, until the tree is old enough.
This cultivar reaches over production eventually.
This cultivar has been in the untied states since the 1980s or the 1990s. This cultivar was found on the land of a government building. During the summer of 2011 the 'Victoria Gozo' located mother tree was found gone, it was clearly removed due to urban development. To this day it still has not been identified. The former 'Victoria Gozo' located mother tree may have been the original tree, in other words a seedling! It's a unique cultivar, and it is not a lot like mount etna fig cultivars. It only has a few slight resemblances.
After a long attempt to get this cultivar identified, on December 4th 2008 George dubbed the unknown cultivar formerly known as 'GM 1' as 'Malta Purple Red'. He named it that based upon where it originated from, and based upon it's fruit's resemblance to a fig cultivar called 'Italian Purple Red (BC#17)', that resemblance was the fruit shape and color. The leaves were the same type as well. He realized this in 2006, thanks to 'Chris and Bill' of the former 'BelleClare Nursery' of Long Island, New York, that is when he took a fruit, and a leaf sample hoping to get his fig cultivar identified. BelleClare's 'Italian Purple Red' turned out not being the same as 'Malta Purple Red'.
I received my 'Malta Purple Red' tree from George July 2010, and I planted it, May 4th 2011.
