It would be strange if a tree, so much cultivated in the south of Asia, should have become naturalized to such a degree in certain islands of the Pacific, while it has scarcely been seen elsewhere. It is probably indigenous to them, and may perhaps yet be discovered wild in some islands nearer to Java.
The French name, pompelmouse, is from the Dutch pompelmoes. Shaddock was the name of a captain who first introduced the species into the West Indies.[887]
Citron, Lemon—Citrus medica, Linnæus.
This tree, like the common orange, is glabrous in all its parts. Its fruit, longer than it is wide, is surmounted in most of its varieties by a sort of nipple. The juice is more or less acid. The young shoots and the petals are frequently tinted red. The rind of the fruit is often rough, and very thick in some subvarieties.[888]
Brandis and Sir Joseph Hooker distinguish four cultivated varieties:—
1. Citrus medica proper (citron in English, cedratier in French, cedro in Italian), with large, not spherical fruit, whose highly aromatic rind is covered with lumps, and of which the juice is neither abundant nor very acid. According to Brandis, it was called vijapûra in Sanskrit.
2. Citrus medica Limonum (citronnier in French, lemon in English). Fruit of average size, not spherical, and abundant acid juice.
3. Citrus medica acida (C. acida, Roxburgh). Lime in English. Small flowers, fruit small and variable in shape, juice very acid. According to Brandis, the Sanskrit name was jambira.
4. Citrus medica Limetta (C. Limetta and C. Lumia of Risso), with flowers like those of the preceding variety, but with spherical fruit and sweet, non-aromatic juice. In India it is called the sweet lime.
The botanist Wight affirms that this last variety is wild in the Nilgherry Hills. Other forms, which answer more or less exactly to the three other varieties, have been found wild by several Anglo-Indian botanists[889] in the warm districts at the foot of the Himalayas, from Garwal to Sikkim, in the south-east at Chittagong and in Burmah, and in the south-west in the western Ghauts and the Satpura Mountains. From this it cannot be doubted that the species is indigenous in India, and even under different forms of prehistoric antiquity.