What does “figuier” mean in French?

In French, many fruit trees are named by adding -ier to the fruit: figue → figuier (fig tree), pomme → pommier, poire → poirier, cerise → cerisier, olive → olivier. Learn the fruit and you can usually guess the tree. The tree is always masculine, even when the fruit is feminine: la pomme, but le pommier.

The pattern has a few twists. Some trees take -er instead, like orange → oranger, and citron → citronnier doubles the n. The same -ier ending also builds containers and jobs (un sablier, an hourglass; un pâtissier, a pastry chef), so context tells you which one you have. Clément explains it himself: un figuier, c’est un arbre qui produit des figues, before describing picking figs from the top of his father’s tree.