Details of Lemon (Rutaceae Citrus)

Lemon (scientific name: citrus lemon (L.) Burm. F.) It belongs to Citrus of Rutaceae, a dicotyledonous plant. Lemon is also called lemon fruit, foreign lemon, beneficial mother fruit and so on. Small trees with little or no thorns, dark purple leaves and buds, thick papery leaves, oval or ovoid. Flowers axillary or rarely clustered. The fruit is oval or ovoid, the peel is thick, usually rough, lemon yellow, the juice is sour to very sour, the seeds are small, ovoid and sharp; Seed coat is smooth, cotyledons are milky white, usually single embryo or multi-embryo. The flowering period is April-May, and the fruiting period is September-165438+1October.

Lemon is produced in the south of the Yangtze River in China, and is native to Southeast Asia. The main producing areas are the United States, Italy, Spain and Greece.

Because of its extremely sour taste, lemon is the favorite food for pregnant women with insufficient liver qi, so it is called beneficial mother fruit or beneficial mother and child. Lemon is rich in citric acid, so it is called "citric acid warehouse". Its juice is crispy and fragrant. Because of its sour taste, it can only be used as a high-grade condiment to prepare drinks, dishes, cosmetics and drugs. In addition, lemon is rich in vitamin C, which can eliminate phlegm and relieve cough, promote fluid production and strengthen the stomach. For bronchitis, whooping cough, loss of appetite, vitamin deficiency, heatstroke and polydipsia, it is the bane of scurvy.

1593, more than 10000 sailors in Britain died of scurvy, and four-fifths of sailors in Spain, Portugal and other countries died of scurvy. Before and after these events, another miracle happened. Some French explorers spent the winter in Canada. Among them, 1 10 people suffer from scurvy. The local Indians told them to drink water soaked in pine leaves. In desperation, the patient was saved by drinking the water.

From 1772 to 1775, during the three-year expedition across the Pacific Ocean, only 1 of the18 crew members died. It turned out that Captain Cook ordered the crew to eat kimchi regularly to prevent the crew from scurvy.

The research on the treatment of scurvy started from 1745 to 1755. Linde, a British doctor, tried fresh vegetables, fruits and medicines to conduct medical experiments on sailors suffering from scurvy. Once, when he was treating the sailors' scurvy on the British "Ship Five", he selected some sailors, divided them into six groups, and treated them with different methods, such as different food, medicine and physical therapy. Unexpectedly, the patients who took the medicine did not get better. On the contrary, a group of patients who ate lemons were cured as if they had eaten "elixir" and soon recovered. Around 1795, the British navy adopted this method, stipulating that every sailor should drink a certain amount of lemon leaf water every day when entering the sea. Two years later, scurvy disappeared in the British navy. The British often use the funny nickname "Lemon Man" to address their sailors and sailors.