Summary
On July 29 2019, the Facebook page “Absurd Memes for a Better Tomorrow” shared a claim that lemons are not naturally occurring. A commenter on that tweet disputed its claims, saying that lemon are in fact native to India.
Claims about non-naturally occurring lemons also appeared in a thread shared to Reddit’s r/NoStupidQuestions in August 2018:
Citrons, pomelos, and mandarins were all native to South and East Asia before they started their journeys west, to places like Florida, California, and Brazil that built entire economies around fruits from the other side of the world. Almost all citrus has the rare genetic combination of being sexually compatible and highly prone to mutation.
All lime- and lemon-like accessions analysed displayed a contribution from the C. medica genome. The data demonstrated that sweet orange and sour orange were hybrids of mandarin and pummelo. The evidence also confirmed that bergamot was a hybrid of sour orange and citron.
