Lemon

The lemon is a small evergreen tree of the citrus family, Rutaceae, grown the world over for its pointed oval yellow fruit, a modified berry with a tough rind whose outer zest holds aromatic oils. Wikipedia gives the true lemon's parents as the citron and the bitter orange, and says some evidence places its origin in north-eastern India in the first millennium BC; Kynes names the citron and the lime as its parents instead. It had reached southern Italy by the second century AD, spread through the Arab world and the Mediterranean in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and crossed to the Americas with Columbus in 1493. Its sour juice, rich in citric acid, goes into lemonade, marinades and baking, the peel yields pectin and oil, and the leaves are brewed as tea. Late medieval Europe valued the fruit as medicine, and it was believed to guard against poison, plague and bewitchment. In India a lemon may be circled around a person to drive off negative energies, or crushed under the wheels of a new car to keep its driver safe. In magical practice Cunningham washes second-hand amulets and jewellery in lemon juice and water to clear whatever clings to them, adds the juice to a full-moon bath, and hangs an unripe lemon bristling with coloured pins in the home to draw blessings. Kynes dabs newly acquired ritual tools with lemon hydrosol to purify them.