[Sca-cooks]Lemons and neither Noty nor Notye

[Johnna Holloway]

I too am a librarian and recognized which source you were
using for your previous quotes. Readers ought to be aware
that the online corpus is far from complete.
http://www.hti.umich.edu/c/cme/about.html  provides the details
as to what has and hasn't been done.
(One of the benefits of being here at the UM is that I get to play on
things that aren't in the public domain yet. This was one of those
that was available locally long before it was up for the rest of the world.)

 As for those fabled ship's records C. Anne Wilson notes
that in 1289 Queen Eleanor (who was a princess from Castile)
received 15 lemons and  7 oranges. Upon her deathbed they managed
to procure her an additional 39 lemons for an outstandingly high price.
That's the only mention of lemons that I have found. One has to remember
that they didn't need lemons at that time for sour juice. For that they used
the oranges of the period which were the sour or bitter oranges.
Those we have shipping records for. Both Hammond and Wilson note those.

As to weather information, actually I'd suggest starting with a classic like
Ladurie's Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since 
the Year 1000.
Then run that source through a citation search through
Science Citation Abstracts and Social Science Citation Abstracts.
I suppose that if you must start with something on the web then
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/Articles/2001/hockeybib.htm

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: World Wide Investigations of Climate Change 
Associated

# With the Little Ice Age
# Prepared by:
# Diane Douglas-Dalziel, Ph.D.
# Arizona State University Office of Climatology

would get you started. I presume that you have access to a good geology 
or sciences library for the articles
cited.

Johnnae llyn Lewis

>> --- Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> So given these facts---What exactly leads you to believe that  they 
>>> grew
>>> Lemons
>>> in Britain in the middle ages? Do you think that Britain was
>>> all that tropical during the medieval period?
>>
>>
>>
>> As smart-alecky as that comment was meant to be...
>>
>> There are plenty of incidences of 'peculiar' or 'specialty' plants 
>> and such being grown in
>> ornamental and horticultural gardens in period, and I figured I might 
>> as well peep in on the Royal
>> Gardens and Orchards of the time, to see if I could hit any 
>> references to the lemon tree.  The
>> ships manifests are likely going to be more fruitful (pun intended), 
>> but there is really no harm
>> in looking at more than one source for the information.  I don't 
>> think I really implied that there
>> were massive groves of lemon trees dotting the British landscape.
>>
>> As for the climate of Britain during the middle ages, there is ample 
>> evidence to suggest that
>> Britain, and in fact all of Europe, was a tad bit warmer than it is 
>> today. Peek at a few of the
>> climatological studies on the internet or in the library.  Tropical?? 
>> No. But then, lemons grow
>> quite well in temperate climates, as well (as do the vast majority of 
>> citrus fruits.)
>>
>> William de Grandfort
>
>
> Lemons are rather particular about where they grow.  They grow best in 
> a temperate to sub-tropical range above freezing and below extreme 
> heat.  They also require a lot of water but little rain.  California 
> and Sicily are perfect climates.  Florida tends to be too wet.  The 
> temperatures were too extreme in Northern Italy in period for lemons 
> to be grown there outside of a green house.  The climate in England 
> is,and has been through recorded history, incapable of sustaining a 
> commercial lemon crop.  The economics of green houses made commercial 
> green house cultivation impractical until modern times.  So, other 
> than the occasional specimen in some wealthy man's botanical 
> collection, you can forget about lemons growing in England.
>
> Waverly Root does mention that in 1494 lemons were being grown for 
> export to England, but he doesn't provide a source reference.
>
> Bear
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