I should think it very probable that Shakespeare may have seen both Orange and Lemon trees growing in England. The Orange is a native of the East Indies, and no certain date can be given for its introduction into Europe. Under the name of the Median Apple a tree is described first by Theophrastus, and then by Virgil and Palladius, which is supposed by some to be the Orange; but as they all describe it as unfit for food, it is with good reason supposed that the tree referred to is either the Lemon or Citron. Virgil describes it very exactly—
"Ipsa ingens arbor, faciemque simillima lauro
Et si non alium late jactaret odorem
Laurus erat; folia hand ullis labentia ventis
Flos ad prima tenax."—Georgic ii, 131.
Dr. Daubeny, who very carefully studied the plants of classical writers, decides that the fruit here named is the Lemon, and says that it "is noticed only as a foreign fruit, nor does it appear that it was cultivated at that time in Italy, for Pliny says it will only grow in Media and Assyria, though Palladius in the fourth century seems to have been familiar with it, and it was known in Greece at the time of Theophrastus." But if Oranges were grown in Italy or Greece in the time of Pliny and Palladius, they did not continue in cultivation. Europe owes the introduction or reintroduction to the Portuguese, who brought them from the East, and they were grown in Spain in the eleventh century. The first notice of them in Italy was in the year 1200, when a tree was planted by St. Dominic at Rome. The first grown in France is said to have been the old tree which lived at the Orangery at Versailles till November, 1876, and was called the Grand Bourbon. "In 1421 the Queen of Navarre gave the gardener the seed from Pampeluna; hence sprang the plant, which was subsequently transported to Chantilly. In 1532 the Orange tree was sent to Fontainebleau, whence, in 1684, Louis XIV. transferred it to Versailles, where it remained the largest, finest, and most fertile member of the Orangery, its head being 17yds. round." It is not likely that a tree of such beauty should be growing so near England without the English gardeners doing their utmost to establish it here. But the first certain record is generally said to be in 1595, when (on the authority of Bishop Gibson) Orange trees were planted at Beddington, in Surrey, the plants being raised from seeds brought into England by Sir Walter Raleigh. The date, however, may be placed earlier, for in Lyte's "Herbal" (1578) it is stated that "In this countrie the Herboristes do set and plant the Orange trees in there gardens, but they beare no fruite without they be wel kept and defended from cold, and yet for all that they beare very seldome." There are no Oranges in Gerard's catalogue of 1596, and though he describes the trees in his "Herbal," he does not say that he then grew them or had seen them growing. But by 1599 he had obtained them, for they occur in his catalogue of that date under the name of "Malus orantia, the Arange or Orange tree," so that it is certainly very probable that Shakespeare may have seen the Orange as a living tree.
As to the beauty of the Orange tree, there is but one opinion. Andrew Marvel described it as—
"The Orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night."
Bermudas.
George Herbert drew a lesson from its power of constant fruiting—
"Oh that I were an Orenge tree,
That busie plant;
Then should I ever laden be,
And never want
Some fruit for him that dressed me."
Employment.