Aw summertime. Longer days, lemonade, and lounging around. Today we're talking about lemonade. Sort of. We're talking about the history of citrus fruit. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this is Hello from the Van. Lemonade, lemon meringue pie, lemon bars, a crispy water with a slice of lemon. But where do these lemons come from and how are they related to limes, oranges, and other citrus fruits? First off, we only know what we have record of, so here's a little history. From paintings, mosaics, and ancient writings, we know that ancient Greeks were aware of and used lemons and limes as far back as 350 BC, following the introduction of the fruit by Alexander the Great. World domination apparently came with citrus. Citrus was well known by the ancient cultures of the Greeks and later the Romans, and beautiful ceramic tiles and mosaics have been found in the ruins of places like Pompeii. There's another beautiful mosaic tile in the ruins of a Roman village in North Africa that dates around the second century AD, and it clearly shows the fruit of a citron and a lemon growing on a tree branch. It would make sense then that lemons and limes were known and used long before then, but we simply don't have records that go that far back. Speaking of records, did you know that lemons, limes, and oranges are all related? They are. And with that, it's time for citrus genealogy. We must go back to the genetic beginning. When was that? Well, it was a long time ago. The dates are fuzzy. Through plant genetics, scientists have ascertained that all modern citrus fruit come from only 10 plants. There were 10 original species of citrus, most of which are now ironically extinct. And where did those 10 varieties come from? According to the Genetic Literacy Project, quote, a global team of scientists sequenced the genomes of 60 citrus varieties to draw up a citrus fruit family tree. There's that genealogy aspect. They traced the citrus to 10 species that all descended from one single species, known as the mother of all citrus, in the southeastern foothills of the Himalayas. They believe this mother of all citrus dates back to the late Miocene period. That specimen likely resembled a present-day inedible papada, a bitter, sour fruit. So from the papada came ten wild or natural species of citrus. All of the different varieties of citrus come from these original ten. Close quote. Interestingly, according to Guang Wu of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, all other citrus types, including oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, are hybrids derived from two or more of the ten pure species. It's almost like paint colors. You know how mixing the primary colors of paint can make all the other colors you see in a painting? It's the same concept of mixing and matching, but with citrus. From the ten pure species, we mixed and matched until we got the fruits that we have today. So that covers the ancient history, but what about our modern fruits? How did we get those? Especially to climates that they don't naturally grow in. Well, I'm glad you asked. When we consider the globe, eastern regions such as India, the Middle East, and China have all had citrus fruit forever. Europe and the Americas didn't get oranges, lemons, and limes until much later. And why did they get citrus? Well, because sailors got scurvy. In the 15th and 16th century, sailing was how you got around if you wanted to go exploring or do large amounts of trade with other countries. Naturally, there weren't refrigerators or ice packs or ways to store food. So any food you brought had to be shelf stable, meaning it didn't need special conditions such as cold to stay fresh. The main foods for sailors in the 15th and 16th centuries were seabiscuits, very hard shelf-stable bits of flour, salted meat, and fish. While you wouldn't die, this food wasn't enough to protect sailors from a disease called scurvy. Scurvy is caused by a severe lack of vitamin C. Most animals can synthesize their own vitamin C, except humans, monkeys, and guinea pigs for some reason. When you don't have enough vitamin C, it can give you sores, cause your teeth to fall out, and eventually lead to death. The human body requires vitamin C. In the 1600s, some captains knew that citrus fruit was a cure for scurvy, but their belief wasn't based on any trials or testing that had been done, but on their own observations and experiences. When you see the crew of your ship suffer, you try to find a solution, and these captains had found it. We have records of one captain writing a letter and saying that he knew lemons were the cure for scurvy, but he just wished that someone would study it and write about it. And someone did. That man was named James Lind, but tragically it would take nearly a hundred years before he would come along. James Lind was a part of the Royal Navy in England and a medical apprentice. It was a kind of doctor in training. His service allowed him to observe the diseases that affected sailors firsthand. In the year 1747, on board the ship HMS Salisbury, he carried out one of the first controlled clinical trials recorded ever in medical science. Here's what he did. He took 12 men suffering from scurvy. He then divided them into six pairs, so six groups of two, and treated them with remedies suggested by previous writers and sailors. Here's a list of the remedies. See which group you would like to be in. One group was given a quart of cider every day, so alcohol. One group was given 25 drops of elixir of vitriol three times a day. If you're wondering what elixir of vitriol is, it's sulfuric acid. That's what they got. They got sulfuric acid. The third group got half a pint of sea water. The fourth group got a nutmeg sized paste of garlic, mustard seed, horseradish, balsam of Peru, and gum myrrh three times a day. The second to last group got two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day. And the last group got two oranges and one lemon a day. By the end of the week, those on citrus fruits were well enough to help be nurses for the others. Lynde was so successful that he would go on to write the Treatise of Scurvy. His practice would become common practice throughout the Royal Navy. Lemons became the standard preventative treatment for sailors around the world. In the hundreds of years since Lynde, we have learned quite a lot. Remember how I mentioned that most animals can synthesize their own vitamin C? One of those animals is the rat. Well, what's on a lot of ships? Rats. And it was known that sailors who ate the ship's rats normally did not suffer from scurvy the same as others who abstained, because rats are a great source of vitamin C. I wish I was joking. But even before Lynn's clinical trial, citrus was a part of exploration. We actually have old ship records that show how important lemons and limes were to sailors. In the 15th and 16th century, European explorers began spreading citrus seeds all across the world. Famously, Columbus brought them to the Caribbean Islands on his second trip to the Americas. Thanks to that effort, there is still a thriving citrus economy today. In the United States, Florida was the original go-to for growing lemons, but Florida experienced a massive ice storm in the 1800s, known as the Ice Age, that knocked out most of their trees. While they did eventually recover, this ice age was the perfect chance for California growers to ramp up production and fill the lemon gap. So that brings our history up to the 1800s, where citrus groves are established all across the entire world, in places that they will thrive, of course. But what about places that citrus doesn't naturally grow? It would take until the late 1990s for oranges, lemons, and limes to become year-round fruits for places like New York, Montana, and Canada. Citrus fruits are now available in most areas year-round due to the wonder that is modern shipping and air transportation. But it was not until the last 30 years that that was even a possibility. To help it out, food scientists are also continuing to hybridize and modify the original citrus fruits to create new combinations of fruits that can withstand weather, transportation, and economic processing. To round out the episode today, here are some quick citrus facts. Grapefruits are called grapefruit because they grow in a cluster like grapes. This was embarrassingly new information for me. Yep, I did not know that. Clearly, I was not raised where citrus naturally grows. There are over 2,500 types of citrus fruit in this world. There is not a definite count because they are so easily hybridized. Of the 10 original citrus species, five are still available to us today. These are the papeta, citron, pomelo, mandarin, and kumquat. Finally, lime trees and certain types of lemon trees, like Meyer lemons, are considered evergreen. This means that they can flower and produce fruit all year round. A quick story about that. There was a time in my life when I lived in southern Arizona. I was invited to a party and told to bring a dessert. I brought a lemon cheesecake and had planned to put lemon slices as a fancy garnish on top. I showed up with my store-bought lemon, ready to slice it into aesthetic pieces. And when I tell you that the host of this party was absolutely disappointed in me, Mimi, we have a lemon tree. No one in this town buys lemons at the store. We have literally hundreds of lemons in the backyard. I would then go into her backyard and discover that yes, there were in fact hundreds of lemons, and they were way nicer than the super sad lemon that I had just bought at Food City. So yeah, if you move somewhere hot from somewhere cold, maybe check with the locals before you start spending money on what is readily available local fruit. And with that, I'm Mimi Fots, and this has been another episode of Hello from the Van.