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LEMON TREE, VERY PRETTY….
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LEMON TREE, VERY PRETTY….

Aug 28- Sept 04, 2026, Eating is Fun / Eating is Yuck! - A variety food column, Life & Living August 28, 2026 , by

DON’T know about you but I have always had a very soft corner for …er…the sour lemons of life which are so full of sunshine even on gloomy days! The world of lemons is truly infinite and these days they’re bringing to mind that sad old 1995 hit song — Fool’s Garden, Peter Freudeuthaler’s “Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat…” Etcetera. Really lonesome song! Anyway this whole week I’ve been getting some lovely home garden’s lemons green-skinned and roughly yellow and I can’t get them of my mind. I have an old love for lemons and always insist when eating out that they give me some lemon quarters for jazzing up this, that or the other…be it an over mild lemonade, “Please give me the juice of one whole lemon please and you may charge me for it!” Lemons are now going for almost Rs10 per lemon in the Goan market and only last year they were Rs5. Well, call it cost of living going up.
 The lemon family is a very amazing family off fruits and most lemons we get today are the hybrid varieties…grafted from the original wild citron , say the giant mauling citron (the Citrus medica) which can cost as much at Rs50 plus, plus if you find it. Mauling or “mahalung” or “madiphala” lemon is rare to find unless someone is growing it and suddenly someone gifts you a few of them to turn into marmalade or jelli or something, it has thick congruous skin and flesh, really jungle beauty if I may say so. I think this mauling citron fruit lemon is also the “gondharaj lebu” of West Bengal but am not so sure, couldn’t confirm it with all the data available on the oh so valuable fruit of the lemon….mot of the time we see the kagzi nimbu, the kagzi nemu (Asasam lemon), then Lucknow seedless or pant lemons, the Eureka and Lisbon lemons which are larger, elongated lemons juicy and zesty or so to speak.
Then of course we have the large sweeter fruit of the same family of citrus—the mandarins oranges, sweet limes, kinnow hybrids, pomelos or “torange” and not to forget the grapefruit. I was reading about this very rare “caviar lemon” where it is the “vesicles” within which are harvested and they go “pop” in the mouth like caviar…something like that.
WHERE are lemons native? Well, it’s said they were introduced to Spain and north Africa between 1000 to 1200CE – by the Crusaders, they were found in Palestine, in 1494 they were cultivated in the Azores and shipped to England. The 18th Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus took the original lemon stock and worked on the citrus stock to get grafted varieties more edible…

All together from the citrus family of oranges and lemons!


Are lemons are good to eat? Of course, don’t ever knock that. A lemon a day will do a lot of good by way of giving you a daily dose of vitamin C, which is one of the ACE vitamins and C is known to be the most healing vitamin…heals all miseries of mind and body, heart and mind. I’m not being fanciful. It is not for nothing that many in mainstream medicine too now prescribe high dozes of vitamin C to critical patients, it was recommended by Dr Shiva Ayyadurai when the covid pandemic hit the USA and I believe a lot of lives were saved.
Apart from vitamin C and citric acid lemons also have the vitamin Bs like especially thiamine, riboflavin and niacin…I’m told in the healing department they aid recovery from intestinal disturbances and disorders,they areanti-hemorrhagic, plasma enhancers, etcetera. Recall the traditional by-products you get from lemons: lemon oil (polishing furniture), pectin (which makes for jellies), perfumes, what else? I have friends who dry lemon peels and powder them fine and use the powder as a bath body scrub. Lemon peel also goes into fragrant “potlis” or potpourris in combo with spices like cloves, cinnamon, star anise, cinnamon, and camphor…to tuck into cupboard corners for fragrant linen, in drawers and beds. Lemons have real personality and character, okay. Go romance them, my dears!
What else about lemons? Oh, I’m so in love with lemons of all kinds including the mini limes which may be green outside but utterly ravishingly orange within…in India lemons are called variously “limbo, nimboo, nebu…” For your further information the lemon tree is really an evergreen bush most times and of the rue family –Rutaceae. I think the hybrids of the Citrus linonum bloom and fruit within three years…in the Mediterranean countries they’re much loved and the Sicilian lemons are or so famous and in Italy they make confectionary using lemons….even in Goa think of lemon tarts with more lemon curd than thick crusty tart, it’s hard to find a finely made lemon tart. Of course, one may have lemon curd or cream rolls of alle belle fame, lemon cake, lemon squash…how about lemon and green coriander soup one of these days?
Okay, no more. It’s a good idea to plant a few lemon trees in your garden or backyard or front yard or balcony or window…you will never regret it.

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