FIG TREE By The Little Branch Where did the phrase 'I don't give a fig' come from? The implied lack of any concern carries with it a scene of an endless surplus of figs underfoot in the midday sun, browsed upon by wasps and so plentiful that dispensing them by the bushel hardly counts as a gift. I wish. I love everything about fig trees, from elephant trunk stems with their curious wrinkled bark that looks as though it has rucked and slipped a little down the wood it encases, to the huge modesty-concealing leaves and, of course, the voluptuary promise of the fruit. Most people see them as fruit trees, in the same way that they would grow a plum or gooseberry, but their fruiting is pathetic in this country and they are best grown as lovely living objects - the fruit is a bonus. The exception to this is if you grow figs in a greenhouse, where they will perform to something like their southern potential. Most of the 1,000 species are tropical and 70 per cent