MANO DI BUDDHA

Among citrus fruits, it is certainly one of the most eye-catching, not so much for its flowers and fragrance, but for its unusual and, let's say, strange shape. It is the Citrus Medica in the sarcodactylus variety, better known as the Buddha's Hands citron. Native to areas of Southeast Asia, more or less in present-day Bhutan, it appears to have arrived in our region as early as Roman times, so much so that Pliny the Elder mentions it in his Naturalis Historia, calling it the Assyrian apple. The Buddha's Hands citron, belonging to the Rutaceae family, owes its name to the unusual shape of its fruit, segmented and divided into various parts, due to a genetic malformation.