Interesting read, and nicely follows last week’s Lunchbox Envy where “Oranges” was the subject. A great podcast if you like food and fun facts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0n1sn05

Meyer lemons from my backyard.

https://www.w6rz.net/lemons.png

During lockdown I started growing clementine from seed. One of the interesting details of this genus is polyembryonism: multiple seedlings emerging from one seed. Apparently, one of the seedlings will be a clone of the motherplant and the rest will be the product of pollination/genetic reshuffling. My clementine seeds all had 2 seedlings per seed but other attempts (with lemon I think) yielded 3 or more).

During my reading I came across a lot of contradictory info about the origin of the clementine: some papers say it’s an unknown hybrid, other clearly state it’s a mutation instead of a hybrid. So it’s interesting to read the hybrid parentage in this triangle, stated with confidence.

A Persian lime is a cross between a Key lime and a lemon? I never would have guessed that, that's really interesting.

I recently learned about the fact that Sichuan peppercorns are actually related to citrus, so was looking for where the connection is... As it turns out[1], there is a "citrus family" (Rutaceae[2]) and a citrus genus (Citrus[3], in that family). The Sichuan plant is a member of the family, but not the genus (that would be Zanthoxylum[4]). Confusing!

  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248319
  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutaceae
  [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus
  [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanthoxylum

Also, this is a pretty good page on citrus (both family and genus): https://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/citrus.html

Thanks lovely piece of work.

I couldn't find Yuzu, I guess I could have looked at the source JSON file, worked out the co-ordinates that find it on the chart, if its there.

Yuzu seems to be having a bit of a moment, like pistachio nuts.

Inheritance is astonishingly more complex than trees, e.g.

Wong et al. (2024) "A general and efficient representation of ancestral recombination graphs" https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyae100

This is cool! I do wish I could search for a specific citrus by name.

Couldn't find blood oranges (sanguina in Spanish). Curious to know where they fit.

Seems to be missing the Etrog? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_taxonomy#Citrons

Also, the "click to show search results" is cool but fails for "Arizona Citron" in obvious ways.

This is very cool, thank you for building it! I remember reading about the mess of citrus genealogy in John McPhee's Oranges (wonderful book).

Missing kumquats (and calamondins and mandarinquats)

Now I wish I could try all of these.