Personalities who made the history… of lemon!

The Persian apples of Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great, king of the Macedonians, was used to eating the yellow fruit during his Persian campaigns, from here the epithet: ” Persian apple”.

Columbus’s lemons

Christopher Columbus discovered America and Americans discovered lemon thanks to the Genoese navigator. It was Columbus in fact who planted the first lemon trees on the Caribbean island of Haiti. The cultivation spread in Florida and California, where in the XIX century some particular cultivars were produced, able to stand the American West Coast climate.

The sour taste, according to Dante

The “Divine Poet” associated the sour and harsh taste of his satire to the golden pommes:

“And then across the sky, from light to light
I learnt what that if I retell,
To many would taste like strong citrus fruit

(Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Paradise, Canto XVII, vv. 115-117)