Orange The Bizarre

Citrus aurantium var. Bizarreria – The Bizarre Orange

Described in Florence as early as 1644, La Bizarrerie is undoubtedly the most extraordinary plant in the history of botany. This orange tree simultaneously produces, on the same tree, bitter oranges, lemons, citrons, and hybrid fruits with unpredictable shapes: half orange, half citron, sometimes arranged in crossed segments.

A single individual can thus bear round or mammillated fruits, with an orange rind and citron flesh, defying all classification. Pierre-Antoine Poiteau himself admitted that this "monster" defied botanical laws and that the science of his time remained powerless to explain this marvel.

The tree exhibits the habit of the sour orange tree, but some of its leaves are narrow and twisted, heralding the branches that will bear reddish flowers and hybrid fruits, while normal leaves prefigure white flowers and classic oranges.

This duality also manifests in its behavior: without careful pruning, La Bizarrerie can "run wild," favoring only one of its natures to revert to a simple lemon or bitter orange tree. Presented to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1711 under the improper name "hermaphrodite," it remains a fascinating mystery, a product of chance: the graft died, the wild stock grew back... and gave birth to this marvel.

This plate is taken from Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin's Traité des Arbres Fruitiers, a fruit encyclopedia published between 1807 and 1835, and a major reference in 19th-century naturalist illustration.

It combines the rigor of scientific drawing with a rare artistic sensibility, characteristic of the great plates from the golden age of illustrated botany.