Note 46 — Chapter II
Reading edition
The name portogallo, so generally applied to the orange in Italy, seems to favor this claim. The orange, however, was known in Europe before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and, therefore, before the establishment of direct relations between Portugal and the East.
A correspondent of the Athenæum, in describing the newly excavated villa, which has been named Livia's Villa, near the Porta del Popolo at Rome, states that: "The walls of one of the rooms are, singularly enough, decorated with landscape paintings, a grove of palm and orange trees, with fruits and birds on the branches—the colors all as fresh and lively as if painted yesterday." The writer remarks on the character of this decoration as something very unusual in Roman architecture; and if the trees in question are really orange, and not lemon trees, this circumstance may throw some doubt on the antiquity of the painting. If, on the other hand, it proves really ancient, it shows that the orange was known to the Roman painters, if not gardeners. The landscape may perhaps represent Oriental, not European scenery. The accessories of the picture would probably determine that question.—Athenæum, No. 1859, June 13, 1863.
Müller, Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt, p. 86, asserts that in 1802 the ancestor of all the mulberries in France, planted in 1500, was still standing in a garden in the village of Allan-Montélimart.