![]() By the 16th century, sweet oranges were a well-established commercial crop in southern Europe. The Crusades introduced feudal Europeans to lemons, lime and sour oranges, and citrus soon became the fashion of the nobility and rich merchants. Orange trees are still grown in southern California. Many of these citrus groves were lost when the empire disintegrated, and the next wave of introductions came with the rise of Islam and the Arab empire, with citron, sour orange, lemon and pummelo found in North Africa and Spain by 1,150 AD. During the heyday of the Roman Empire, new varieties of fruit trees came flooding into Europe from all over the world, including probably (in order) sour oranges, lemons and sweet oranges. Citrus eventually spread all around the world as a consequence of travel, exploration, war, and politics. For a long time the only citrus in Europe was the citron which was brought to Calabria, Italy by the Jews around AD 70 and is still grown there. Citron, sanctified in India, was dispersed to the Near East, becoming an important part of Jewish culture. Citrus accompanied travelers along the Silk Road, migrating to the Middle East and, eventually, Europe. The first Chinese references date to perhaps 776 BC, although they may actually refer to conditions well before that time. ![]() The oldest known reference to citrus is in the Vajasaneyi Sanihita, a collection of devotional texts written in Sanskrit prior to 800 BC. Citrus is very promiscuous and will cross-pollinate with any other kind of citrus fruit – today’s lemons, limes, grapefruits, and oranges are natural or artificial hybrids of these species – and in combination with a possible polyphyletic origin, there is still considerable confusion on the classification of these fruit trees. maxima, a grapefruit-like fruit) from Malaysia and papeda (a sub-genus of Citrus) native to tropical Asia. Most cultivated citrus seems to be descended from four core ancestral species: citron, Citrus medica, from Northern India mandarin, C. Most citrus is descended from four ancestral species. ![]()
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