Origin and Evolution of Citrus

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Citrus is not native to Florida!  Earliest written records tell of citrus growing in SE Asia around 600 BC.  Many historians and scientists believe this is the area where the fruit developed many centuries earlier.  The actual evolution of citrus is believed to have started several million years ago!  Today’s technology is able to determine that there were five foundational citrus species—citron, pomelo, mandarin, kumquat and lime.

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There are ancient clues from wall paintings in the Egyptian temple at Karnak that citrus trees had been growing there. There were other suggestions that citrus trees may have been familiar to the Jews during their exile and slavery by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC. Even though speculations suggest that citrus trees were known and grown by the Hebrews, there is no direct mention in the Bible of citrus.

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Citrus was well known by the ancient cultures of the Greeks and later the Romans. A beautiful ceramic tile depiction of fruit was found in the ruins of Pompeii after the city was destroyed by a volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Another mosaic tile in the ruins of a Roman villa in Carthage, North Africa, in about the 2nd century AD, clearly showed the fruit of a citron and a lemon fruit growing on a tree branch.

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Over the centuries citrus species hybridized creating the hundreds of selections that have been grown all over the world.  The evolution and movement of citrus over literally millions of years shows how man selected the results of nature to enhance his life.