This project was about how citrus affected Sicily for a 1000 years. I have been pondering the possibility of continuing citrus travelogues elsewhere; there are so many fascinating stories: Algeria, Australia, Philippines, New Orleans, China, Japan, etc, etc. But your note makes me happy because once I finished this series, I started trying every citrus not related to Sicilian history I could get my hands on. Finger limes are one of my favorites. Bergamot is so weird, and it is the best marmelade. Regardless of whether I do more citrus travelogues, I will get to a global Citrus poster within a year.
That is a really cool chart...I wish it would include micrantha, which it references but doesn't include in the triangle...but really cool way to visualize it.
Only tangential, but it reminds me of how the cure for scurvy was found, then lost. https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm Basicly, the danger of using something you don't understand. It mostly works, Until it doesn't and you can't fix it.
Note that the cure for scurvy was never lost. It had been known for several thousand years already and it remained known continuously through the period you indicate.
But the official policies of the British Royal Navy did go through a cycle of not having any effective approach to scurvy, then having an effective approach, and then not having an effective approach again. That isn't because the knowledge was lost.
Citrus ancestry is stupidly complex, and the generally commercially available varieties sadly few.
You may have heard of yuzu, which was a foodie fad a couple of years ago (and deservedly so, it smells & tastes great). In Japan, it's only one of numerous citruses, including dekopon (navel mandarins, occasional sold in Australia as "sumo"), tachibana, kabosu, sudachi, etc.
Hop a few islands down to Okinawa, and the fruits change yet again! Here you have shikwasa (hirami lemon), tachibana, tanibuta, etc.
Yes, the series is about how citrus from Southeast Asia impacted every aspect of Sicilian culture, cuisine and politics for 1,000 years. Let me know what you think of Chapter 5, which is about the wild fruits.
Unfortunately when I try to shop for them nowadays they're all AI slop. Is it too much to ask to get a nice Encyclopedia of Pastries poster? Apparently it is.
Thank you! One reason hand-drawn posters are rare is how long they take. The
citrus plate at the bottom of this page is 25 fruits and took
me roughly 100 hours; my chili poster took about 500 because it was 176 fruits. Nobody does that work to make money on a poster. There has to be an
underlying editorial reason to draw the thing in the first place. For me, I am like you...I always wanted to see these things as posters and they never existed. Speaking of pastries, that Great British Bakeoff must have thousands of those pastry and cake illustrations that they use to illustrate the show.
> Nobody does that work to make money on a poster.
You reminded me of something. I was looking at a book of artwork with my brother and he commented that some of the art was bad because there was too much drawn in the background.
I think this is a case of "misplaced advice" - the belief that background artwork lowers the overall quality of a piece is false, but it persists because it is helpful to artists.
If you're trying to sell your artwork, people will pay a lot more for foregrounds than they will for backgrounds, but backgrounds aren't any easier than foregrounds - generally they're harder - so any time you spend drawing stuff in the background effectively lowers your hourly earnings. (Unless the level of background detail in your art is so low that it's making it all unsaleable.)
But if you ask people about what artwork they like, background detail is always helpful.
You can get some decently high resolution images on Wikipedia commons which are scans of old hand drawn illustrations in books. Then (I know, I know) use an AI tool to enlarge the images to a high enough resolution that they print nicely. There are task specific tools just for enlarging that do a pretty decent job if you aren’t trying to go more than 2x. But the scans are usually enough that you only need to slightly enlarge them to get to a resolution that prints 300dpi at a reasonable size.
Great question. In Sicily, there is a specific tangelo called the Mapo, although it is a very small crop. Sumos are grown only in California, I believe. Here in Portland, we are just starting to get tangelos and sumos, but they all seem early and a little bland. In other month, it's citrus heaven. Since I just finished this series, I have been trying to taste any citrus I can. I love finger limes and bergamots.
This doesn't actually answer the question. It lists the parentage of some other varieties, and then lists a bunch of blood oranges without saying where they came from.
Claude can make some very interesing, informative, accurate sites to present information. This isn't an example.
Hi, this is an epilogue from an 8 chapter series that explains all of those things. Note that there are chapter links to each of those 8 chapters. For the chapter on blood oranges, I spoke with agronomists, ecologists and historians, and sketched a blood orange grove. The fruits shown on this epilogue are the fruits that I discussed in the series.
Fair point that the page didn't stand on its own. I didn't submit it;
it was written as an epilogue for people who had already read the
series, so it assumed all of that context. It's the last page of a 30,000 word essay and was never linked as a standalone page. I've since added an intro
explaining what it is, links to all eight chapters at the top, and
where each fruit originated. I was at the theatre this evening, when I started seeing traffic and these comments, so I rushed home to make the clarifications.
This is interesting. I wonder where Australian citrus fits in with this? Do you know about finger limes aka caviar limes fit in this image?
This project was about how citrus affected Sicily for a 1000 years. I have been pondering the possibility of continuing citrus travelogues elsewhere; there are so many fascinating stories: Algeria, Australia, Philippines, New Orleans, China, Japan, etc, etc. But your note makes me happy because once I finished this series, I started trying every citrus not related to Sicilian history I could get my hands on. Finger limes are one of my favorites. Bergamot is so weird, and it is the best marmelade. Regardless of whether I do more citrus travelogues, I will get to a global Citrus poster within a year.
You might like this video, I saw it awhile ago, it goes over all of the citrus, and their history: https://youtu.be/XkMKJCvJKBk?si=SaRVH8qcQMx2i5x_&t=811
I linked to the Australian portion, there's a second part that talks about migration.
The TL:DR is that one thought is Kumquat was their origin, but it's only a theory.
Related "A ternary plot of citrus genealogy" https://www.jlauf.com/writing/citrus/ (HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47238272 (170 points | March 2026 | 37 comments))
That is a really cool chart...I wish it would include micrantha, which it references but doesn't include in the triangle...but really cool way to visualize it.
Only tangential, but it reminds me of how the cure for scurvy was found, then lost. https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm Basicly, the danger of using something you don't understand. It mostly works, Until it doesn't and you can't fix it.
Note that the cure for scurvy was never lost. It had been known for several thousand years already and it remained known continuously through the period you indicate.
But the official policies of the British Royal Navy did go through a cycle of not having any effective approach to scurvy, then having an effective approach, and then not having an effective approach again. That isn't because the knowledge was lost.
Citrus ancestry is stupidly complex, and the generally commercially available varieties sadly few.
You may have heard of yuzu, which was a foodie fad a couple of years ago (and deservedly so, it smells & tastes great). In Japan, it's only one of numerous citruses, including dekopon (navel mandarins, occasional sold in Australia as "sumo"), tachibana, kabosu, sudachi, etc.
Hop a few islands down to Okinawa, and the fruits change yet again! Here you have shikwasa (hirami lemon), tachibana, tanibuta, etc.
An incomplete list on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_citrus
In 2023 calamansi juice was stocked in every supermarket in Shanghai.
In 2024, it suddenly vanished.
I've been wondering what happened.
Aren't all of the citrus fruits native to South East Asia?
Yes, the series is about how citrus from Southeast Asia impacted every aspect of Sicilian culture, cuisine and politics for 1,000 years. Let me know what you think of Chapter 5, which is about the wild fruits.
Many of the hybrids originated elsewhere.
"Grapefruits originated in Barbados in the 18th century."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit
Yup, and that it what the series is about. Let me know what you think if you get a chance to read it.
I love posters like this one!
Unfortunately when I try to shop for them nowadays they're all AI slop. Is it too much to ask to get a nice Encyclopedia of Pastries poster? Apparently it is.
Thank you! One reason hand-drawn posters are rare is how long they take. The citrus plate at the bottom of this page is 25 fruits and took me roughly 100 hours; my chili poster took about 500 because it was 176 fruits. Nobody does that work to make money on a poster. There has to be an underlying editorial reason to draw the thing in the first place. For me, I am like you...I always wanted to see these things as posters and they never existed. Speaking of pastries, that Great British Bakeoff must have thousands of those pastry and cake illustrations that they use to illustrate the show.
> Nobody does that work to make money on a poster.
You reminded me of something. I was looking at a book of artwork with my brother and he commented that some of the art was bad because there was too much drawn in the background.
I think this is a case of "misplaced advice" - the belief that background artwork lowers the overall quality of a piece is false, but it persists because it is helpful to artists.
If you're trying to sell your artwork, people will pay a lot more for foregrounds than they will for backgrounds, but backgrounds aren't any easier than foregrounds - generally they're harder - so any time you spend drawing stuff in the background effectively lowers your hourly earnings. (Unless the level of background detail in your art is so low that it's making it all unsaleable.)
But if you ask people about what artwork they like, background detail is always helpful.
You can get some decently high resolution images on Wikipedia commons which are scans of old hand drawn illustrations in books. Then (I know, I know) use an AI tool to enlarge the images to a high enough resolution that they print nicely. There are task specific tools just for enlarging that do a pretty decent job if you aren’t trying to go more than 2x. But the scans are usually enough that you only need to slightly enlarge them to get to a resolution that prints 300dpi at a reasonable size.
I wonder if any Sumo or Tangelo is grown there. These are in season and available in the U.S. in the early spring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekopon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangelo
Great question. In Sicily, there is a specific tangelo called the Mapo, although it is a very small crop. Sumos are grown only in California, I believe. Here in Portland, we are just starting to get tangelos and sumos, but they all seem early and a little bland. In other month, it's citrus heaven. Since I just finished this series, I have been trying to taste any citrus I can. I love finger limes and bergamots.
This doesn't actually answer the question. It lists the parentage of some other varieties, and then lists a bunch of blood oranges without saying where they came from.
Claude can make some very interesing, informative, accurate sites to present information. This isn't an example.
Hi, this is an epilogue from an 8 chapter series that explains all of those things. Note that there are chapter links to each of those 8 chapters. For the chapter on blood oranges, I spoke with agronomists, ecologists and historians, and sketched a blood orange grove. The fruits shown on this epilogue are the fruits that I discussed in the series.
Good for you for doing all that prior to prompting your post.
Would be nice if any of what you said was clear from the thing actually posted. Maybe a more detailed prompt next time?
Posting the final post in a series and then expecting people on a random site to have read all prior series posts is not a good look.
Fair point that the page didn't stand on its own. I didn't submit it; it was written as an epilogue for people who had already read the series, so it assumed all of that context. It's the last page of a 30,000 word essay and was never linked as a standalone page. I've since added an intro explaining what it is, links to all eight chapters at the top, and where each fruit originated. I was at the theatre this evening, when I started seeing traffic and these comments, so I rushed home to make the clarifications.