Webster City freeman. [volume] (Webster City, Hamilton County, Iowa) 1884-1946, 1914-07-14
REGULATING LEMON SUPPLY.
Where They Come From-How the
Valuable Essence is Obtained.


Valuable Essence is Obtained.
Our lemon supplies are mostly guar
anteetd by Sicilian summers, says the
London Daily Mail. The Messina and
Palermo crops begin in November and
sometimes last through me whole
year, so that the same ship may bring
the last cases of the old crop and the
first of the new. Next to Sicily We
depend upon Naples and the Neapoli-
tan crop, which begins in the early
spring, usually lasts until October but
this year, again, Neapolitan lemons
have lasted only until the beginning
of September. Then comes sunny
Spain, with Malaga, Murcia and Car
thagena lemons. and the groves OF
Lisbon practically complete the tale
OF our supplies.
California has, during the last thirty
years, supplied some portion of the
American demand, but the United
States is not independent of the
lemon groves of Europe, and it is tho
largest consumer of European lemons,
with Great Britain good second.
The confectioners take their share.
though most of their supplies come in
the form of picked rinds and citrate
of lime. The Messina lemons, having
the most acidity, are the best for tho
purposes of the manufacture Of citrate
80 to -, hot
lemons whose products are wanted BY
the confectioners are dealt with
The pulp is there turned into pow
dered citrate of lime. as it is more
convenient to export than the con-
centrated lemon juice from which the
manufacturers derive their citrate OF
lime; and the rinds are put in brine
and sent over to England to be turned
into that adjunct to Christmas cheer.
candied peel.
The essence of lemon is squeezed out
of the peel by hand. Sicilian girls
stand with a pile Of peel cut into
quarters at their side and before them
is a sponge. That is all their ap-
paratus. The squeeze each quarter
of the rind and jet of essence issues
forth and is soaked up by the sponge.
Then the sponge is squeezed and the
costly essence is bottled, but thous-
ands of lemons are necessary to fill
a tiny vial.
The lemon tree is frail plant and
not so hardly as the orange 1t is so
used to the genial kindness of the sun
that a nip Of frost is fatal to it. One
hour of frost on January 80 last year
almost destroyed the Neapolitan crop.
and though many Of the trees recov-
cred enough strength to put forth
fresh leaves this year they had not
the strength to bear fruit, but by
having rested they will be all the bet
ter next year, so that the crop OF
1907 may be expected to reach high
level of abundance and quality. Last
year, too, the fragrant lemon groves
of the French Riviera were "untimely
nipped j. tn bud" The valleys
showed the black and leafess skele-
tons of trees that should have been in
leaf and blossom and many of them,
shrivelled past recovery, had to be
uprooted.
The Neapolitan lemons are the I'm
est of all and come when they are
most wanted and other crops are over.
But artifice and no mature regulates
their maturity. In certain districts In
Italy, particularly in MAORI, they are
grown on estates which once belonged,
and some of which still belong. to the
ancient nobility of the land who in
restless political times lived on their
estates outside the city and cultivated
lemon groves as part of the elegan-
cies of their pleasure gardens.
Here the trees are not allowed to
grow beyond six or seven feet in
height and the ripening fruit is arti-
ficially retarded by the trees being
covered with rushes supported on
piles, SO that when they ought natur-
ally to be ripe they are sti-l immature,
and the terraces where they grow are
cool and dark even in the sunny days
of early summer But in May the
rushes are thrown aside and the sun
pours down on the trees to ripen the
fruit just at the time when the Eng
fish and American summer demand Is
at its height. Thus the Naples lemons
escape the dangers of a glut and fetch
HIGHEST pricaS when fresh lemons are
most wanted.