Steve (Rewton) on 10-7-14:

I heard back from Richard Watts, as well as Gene Hosey.  Gene confirmed that his Zingarella came from Richard Watts and that he shared one with Herman2 to replace one that he got directly from RW.  Here is what Herman2 told Gene in an old email about the relationship between SalsC and Zingarella:

"Sal's Corleone is like the brother of Zingarella that did get some bad genes from one of the parents,as splitting very bad,and uglier skin color.  The Zingarella is an exceptionally good tasting fig,and also is completely immune to rain or splitting."

Hopefully Gene or Herman2 do no mind that I shared that passage - I thought it shed a bit more light on this topic of Zingarella vs. SalsC by someone who was growing both.  Zingarella was observed by him to be a superior fig.  SalsC is itself an excellent fig for a lot of growers so that is saying something.  So I think it is clear that Zingarella from RW and SalsC are not identical though they seem to share a lot of the same traits.

RW said he has indeed sent out his Zingarella to a lot of fig growers over the years.  He obtained it from Pat Shafer of Philo, CA in the mid 1990's.  RW speculates that Pat Shafer might have gotten it from UC Davis but isn't sure.  I had a quick look at the UC-Davis collection but didn't see it listed.  I suppose it could have been listed years ago though.  If anyone knows Pat Shafer then they can do a deeper investigation.

So basically we have (what appears to be) two different figs with the same name from different sources.  I don't really know of a practical way to verify which is the real one without tracing them back to Italy.  It seems that Wills has been able to trace his back to Switzerland at least!  I'm not sure how Vinnie's fig fits into this.  If anyone is growing a Zingarella that they got from Italy directly it would be interesting to see a post about that specimen.  In lieu of additional information, my proposal is to call the one from Richard Watts "Zingarella (RW)". 

Maybe some day when DNA sequencing is more routine and dirt cheap a committee of serious fig growers can establish a reference database of sequences for varieties that are known to be true to type.  Then all others whose identity is not know can be sequenced and compared to the database.  I make it sound simpler than what it would be but eventually it will be the way to go.