Sicily and the Family Tree of Citrus

On his site Notes From the Road, Erik Gauger has a wonderful eight-part series on The Citrus Kingdom, a collection of illustrated stories about citrus fruit and Sicily.

The key to the citron’s future—a future that links nearly every aspect of Sicily’s cultural, political and culinary history—lies just outside of urban Palermo. It’s a flat plain that was well watered by three rivers. The Arabs turned it into a fantasyland of fertile agriculture. They dug reservoirs and sank new wells and ran canals out across the valley. They began to see it as paradise—the literal version they knew from Persia. They called it the Conca d’Oro. The Golden Shell.

Today, mention of Sicily’s Conca d’Oro symbolizes endless citrus groves. But before miles of orange and lemon trees, it was the citron that proved an Asian mountain fruit could survive a Sicilian August. The answer? Yes, as long as the water keeps moving.

Somewhere in one of those shaded Palermo courtyards, a gardener planted a skinny sapling from a land Sicilians would never see. He was just keeping a tree alive. He had no way of knowing he was starting a kingdom.

The image of the hand-drawn illustration above is available as a print.

You may remember Gauger from his Hand-Drawn Visual Guide to Chili Peppers.

• art
• Erik Gauger
• food
• illustration
• italy