Status Updates From Oranges

“In 1544, Petrus Andreas Matthiolus decided that even orange-flower water, long in use as a perfume, was an excellent specific against the fevers of the plague, a belief which may at least have kept him and his followers in a healthy frame of mind until 1571, when he died of the plague.” (76) 🤣

“The trees, in turn, are fed upon, or otherwise attacked, by many kinds of mites, insects, and fungus diseases, against which Mathias’s crews use a liquid arsenal ranging from a fine mist of petroleum to parathion, a deadly nerve gas developed by German scientists during the Second World War.” Gobsmacking fact 🍊

So many orange trees are in fact Frankenstein’s monsters it seems. I wonder what John McPhee’s thoughts on Cuties would be