# Lemons/Limes
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 18, 2011, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616 "2011-12-18T03:47:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@chris76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chris76)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/1 "2011-12-18T03:47:41Z")
Hello.
Are limes just green lemons or are they a separate fruit? 😕
Chris76
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### Author:  [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/2 "2011-12-18T04:12:04Z")
They are separate fruit.
Or, rather, they are only the same fruit in the same way they’re both the same fruit as oranges or grapefruit. (All of them are in the genus Citrus, but different species - although closely related enough to hybridize, in many cases.)
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### Author:  [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/3 "2011-12-18T13:38:00Z")
To expand - at the community garden I volunteer at, we have lemon trees of various sorts…and lime trees of various sorts. Neither one produces the other, even if we leave the fruit to rot.
-D/a
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### Author:  [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/4 "2011-12-18T13:47:50Z")
It is perfectly possible to graft a lemon stalk into a lime tree (or vice versa) to get lemons and limes from the same tree.
😃
Si
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### Author:  [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/5 "2011-12-18T13:54:53Z")
There are many varieties of both lemons and limes - for example:
Lemons:
Ponderosa
Eureka
Lisbon
Meyer
Limes:
Bearss
Key
Rangpur
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### Author:  [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/6 "2011-12-18T14:04:47Z")
Citrus are completely indiscriminate in terms of cross-breeding. Nearly all the citrus fruit you see in the store are the result of hybridization between the original ancestral strains of citrus fruit. This includes multiple strains of lemons and limes. They’re different strains of fruit, but all just different varieties of citrus.
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### Author:  [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/7 "2011-12-18T15:36:04Z")
The importance of the difference between lemons and limes and different subspecies, esp. since they all look similar to the untrained eye, are described in [this very interesting essay](http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm)about Scott’s journeys in the Antarctica, scurvy, the importance of the proper scientific method and many other things.
> [@](#):
>
> So when the Admiralty began to replace lemon juice with an ineffective substitute in 1860, it took a long time for anyone to notice. In that year, naval authorities switched procurement from Mediterranean lemons to West Indian limes. The motives for this were mainly colonial - it was better to buy from British plantations than to continue importing lemons from Europe. Confusion in naming didn’t help matters. Both “lemon” and “lime” were in use as a collective term for citrus, and though European lemons and sour limes are quite different fruits, their Latin names (citrus medica, var. limonica and citrus medica, var. acida) suggested that they were as closely related as green and red apples
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/8 "2011-12-18T15:42:32Z")
Thai uses the same word for both: _manao_.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2011, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lemons-limes/606616/9 "2011-12-18T16:40:17Z")
Lemons start out green, looking pretty much the same as limes, so it’s a common question. But they are different fruit.