When life first gave the world lemons, no one thought to make lemonade. Rather, the people of Assam in India, where lemons are thought to have originated, gazed at them appreciatively, much like they did tomatoes, which were also cultivated for ornamental purposes.
The history of the lemon is a hazy one. There are few conclusions as to where the lemon originated, but it is thought that modern citrus trees are the descendants of natural species found in the abovementioned region, as well as northern Myanmar and western Yunnan. As the world’s climates changed, the plants spread out through to Southeast Asia and later, Australia, about four million years ago.
Lemons, along with other citrus fruit, eventually made their way to the Mediterranean (and by ‘eventually’, we mean 2,500 years…
