The Citrus Kingdom · Epilogue

The Sicilian Citrus Family Tree

Every citrus fruit in Sicily descends from four wild fruits.

November 9, 2026

The Citrus Kingdom followed eight fruits across Sicily, from the citron in Palermo to the late mandarin of Ciaculli. This is how they are related.

Roman numerals mark each fruit’s chapter in The Citrus Kingdom. Tap a fruit to read it. A dotted line is a sport: one branch of one tree that mutated, the way the late mandarin of Ciaculli began. The bottom three rows are not new crosses either: they are selections and mutations of the sweet orange and the lemon.

1. Citron, pomelo and papeda are wild ancestors. Part I, Palermo · Part V, Vendicari
2. Sour orange: pomelo × mandarin. Part II, Cefalù
3. Interdonato: a lemon–citron hybrid. Part III, Lipari
4. Sweet orange: pomelo × mandarin, crossed back to mandarin. Tarocco, Moro and Sanguinello, the three blood oranges of Etna, are red mutations of it. Part IV, Taormina
5. Verdello: a Femminello lemon forced into a summer crop. Part VI, Ortigia
6. Femminello: Sicily’s main lemon. Monachello and Lunario are its neighbors; Limone dell’Etna is Femminello and Monachello grown on the volcano. Part VII, Modica
7. Tardivo di Ciaculli: the late mandarin, a sport of an Avana mandarin tree, ripening from January into March. Part VIII, Conca d’Oro
8. Mandarino: the Mediterranean mandarin, called Avana in Sicily. Part VIII, Conca d’Oro Clementine: mandarin × sweet orange.
9. Lemon: sour orange × citron, a hybrid of a hybrid.
10. Biondo Comune, Ovale, Valencia, Navelina and Ribera: the blond sweet oranges grown in Sicily. Part IV, Taormina
11. Bergamot: sour orange × lemon. Chinotto: a mutation of the sour orange.
12. Cedrino: a smaller, historically recognized form of the cedro, the citron.
13. Pompia: sour orange × citron, from Sardinia. Lumia: an old citron hybrid, most often citron × pomelo.
14. Key lime: papeda × citron. Grapefruit: sweet orange × pomelo.

Sources for the ancestry: Wu et al., “Genomics of the origin and evolution of Citrus,” Nature 554 (2018); Curk et al., “Phylogenetic origin of limes and lemons revealed by cytoplasmic and nuclear markers,” Annals of Botany 117 (2016); Luro et al., “Genetic, morphological and chemical investigations reveal the genetic origin of Pompia,” Phytochemistry 168 (2019).