I doubt whether its area includes China or the Malay Archipelago. Loureiro mentions Citrus medica in Cochin-China only as a cultivated plant, and Bretschneider tells us that the lemon has Chinese names which do not exist in the ancient writings, and for which the written characters are complicated, indications of a foreign species. It may, he says, have been introduced. In Japan the species is only a cultivated one.[890] Lastly, several of Rumphius’ illustrations show varieties cultivated in the Sunda Islands, but none of these are considered by the author as really wild and indigenous to the country. To indicate the locality, he sometimes used the expression “in hortis sylvestribus,” which might be translated shrubberies. Speaking of his Lemon sussu (vol. ii. pl. 25), which is a Citrus medica with ellipsoidal acid fruit, he says it has been introduced into Amboyna, but that it is commoner in Java, “usually in forests.” This may be the result of an accidental naturalization from cultivation. Miquel, in his modern flora of the Dutch Indies,[891] does not hesitate to say that Citrus medica and C. Limonum are only cultivated in the archipelago.
The cultivation of more or less acid varieties spread into Western Asia at an early date, at least into Mesopotamia and Media. This can hardly be doubted, for two varieties had Sanskrit names; and, moreover, the Greeks knew the fruit through the Medes, whence the name Citrus medica. Theophrastus[892] was the first to speak of it under the name of apple of Media and of Persia, in a phrase often repeated and commented on in the last two centuries.[893] It evidently applies to Citrus medica; but while he explains how the seed is first sown in vases, to be afterwards transplanted, the author does not say whether this was the Greek custom, or whether he was describing the practice of the Medes. Probably the citron was not then cultivated in Greece, for the Romans did not grow it in their gardens at the beginning of the Christian era.
Dioscorides,[894] born in Cilicia, and who wrote in the first century, speaks of it in almost the same terms as Theophrastus. It is supposed that the species was, after many attempts,[895] cultivated in Italy in the third or fourth century. Palladius, in the fifth century, speaks of it as well established.
The ignorance of the Romans of the classic period touching foreign plants has caused them to confound, under the name of lignum citreum, the wood of Citrus, with that of Cedrus, of which fine tables were made, and which was a cedar, or a Thuya, of the totally different family of Coniferæ.
The Hebrews must have known the citron before the Romans, because of their frequent relations with Persia, Media and the adjacent countries. The custom of the modern Jews of presenting themselves at the synagogue on the day of the Feast of Tabernacles, with a citron in their hand, gave rise to the belief that the word hadar in Leviticus signified lemon or citron; but Risso has shown, by comparing the ancient texts, that it signifies a fine fruit, or the fruit of a fine tree. He even thinks that the Hebrews did not know the citron or lemon at the beginning of our era, because the Septuagint Version translates hadar by fruit of a fine tree. Nevertheless, as the Greeks had seen the citron in Media and in Persia in the time of Theophrastus, three centuries before Christ, it would be strange if the Hebrews had not become acquainted with it at the time of the Babylonish Captivity. Besides, the historian Josephus says that in his time the Jews bore Persian apples, malum persicum, at their feasts, one of the Greek names for the citron.
The varieties with very acid fruit, like Limonum and acida, did not perhaps attract attention so early as the citron, however the strongly aromatic odour mentioned by Dioscorides and Theophrastus appears to indicate them. The Arabs extended the cultivation of the lemon in Africa and Europe. According to Gallesio, they transported it, in the tenth century of our era, from the gardens of Oman into Palestine and Egypt. Jacques de Vitry, in the thirteenth century, well described the lemon which he had seen in Palestine. An author named Falcando mentions in 1260 some very acid “lumias” which were cultivated near Palermo, and Tuscany had them also towards the same period.[896]
Orange—Citrus Aurantium, Linnæus (excl. var. γ); Citrus Aurantium, Risso.
Oranges are distinguished from shaddocks (C. decumana) by the complete absence of down on the young shoots and leaves, by their smaller fruit, always spherical, and by a thinner rind. They differ from lemons and citrons in their pure white flowers; in the fruit, which is never elongated, and without a nipple on the summit; in the rind, smooth or nearly so, and adhering but lightly to the pulp.
Neither Risso, in his excellent monograph of Citrus, nor modern authors, as Brandis and Sir Joseph Hooker, have been able to discover any other character than the taste to distinguish the sweet orange from more or less bitter fruits. This difference appeared to me of such slight importance from the botanical point of view, when I studied the question of origin in 1855, that I was inclined, with Risso, to consider these two sorts of orange as simple varieties. Modern Anglo-Indian authors do the same. They add a third variety, which they call Bergamia, for the bergamot orange, of which the flower is smaller, and the fruit spherical or pyriform, and smaller than the common orange, aromatic and slightly acid. This last form has not been found wild, and appears to me to be rather a product of cultivation.
It is often asked whether the seeds of sweet oranges yield sweet oranges, and of bitter, bitter oranges. It matters little from the point of view of the distinction into species or varieties, for we know that both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms all characters are more or less hereditary, that certain varieties are habitually so, to such a degree that they should be called races, and that the distinction into species must consequently be founded upon other considerations, such as the absence of intermediate forms, or the failure of crossed fertilization to produce fertile hybrids. However, the question is not devoid of interest in the present case, and I must answer that experiments have given results which are at times contradictory.