200 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
I should think it very probable that Shakespeare may have 
seen both Orange and Lemon 
trees growing in England. The 
Orange is a native of the East 
Indies, and no certain date can 
be given for its introduction 
into Europe. Under the name 
of the Median Apple a tree is 
described first by Theophrastus, 
and then by Virgil and Pal- 
ladius, which is supposed by 
some to be the Orange; but 
as they all describe it as unfit 
for food, it is with good reason 
supposed that the tree referred 
to is either the Lemon or 
Citron. Virgil describes it very exactly— 
“ Ipsa ingens arbor, faciemque simillima lauro 
Et si non alium late jactaret odorem 
Laurus erat; folia haud ullis labentia ventis 
Flos ad prima tenax.”— Georgic , ii. 131. 
Dr. Daubeny, who very carefully studied the plants of 
classical writers, decides that the fruit here named is the 
Lemon, and says that it “is noticed only as a foreign fruit, 
nor does it appear that it was cultivated at that time in Italy, 
for Pliny says it will only grow in Media and Assyria, though 
Palladius in the fourth century seems to have been familiar 
with it, and it was known in Greece at the time of Theo¬ 
phrastus.” But if Oranges were grown in Italy or Greece in 
the time of Pliny and Palladius, they did not continue in 
cultivation. Europe owes the introduction or re-introduction 
to the Portuguese, who brought them from the East, and they 
were grown in Spain in the eleventh century. The first notice 
of them in Italy was in the year 1200, when a tree was planted 
by St. Dominic at Rome. The first grown in France is said 
to have been the old tree which lived at the Orangery at 
Versailles till November 1876, and was called the Grand 
