Of Shaddocks and Pomelos
There was a nomenclature problem with Citrus maxima, the largest landrace variety of the citrus family. The various strains imported from China after its initial transmission by Captain Shaddock ranged from orange skinned to yellow, from crenulated rinds to smooth pore, and from roughly round to conical in fruit configuration. Nursery companies in Europe designated it the pumpel-mouse. This name was generally reckoned a market drag, so several alternative names attached to it in the United States: pomelo for the roundish fruited strains, Shadock or Chinese Shaddock for the conical strains. The genetic diversity of this ancient landrace caused fruit growers in the West Indies, Florida, and California to use multiple names for disparate forms of the same fruit. California orchardists introduced Chinese Shaddock for the conical. While this form was grown in the West Indies and Florida, the rounder strains came to be favored because they were easier to pack and ship. They came to be designated Pomelos.
One of the three primordial species of Citrus, the Shaddock/Pomelo was the largest of the ancestral fruits from which the panoply of citrus developed. It was planted in Jamaica by the East India Company shortly before the close of the seventeenth century. With fruit ranging from 6 to 10 inches in circumference, and insulated with a pithy and bitter abedo protecting the sweet white, and sometimes pinkish, meat. Each segment is compartmentalized in white abedo, and the meat is comprised of many articulated juice vesicles, that give the fruit a grainy texture. It is quite seedy, does not self-pollinate, but must have another strain of Pomelo or other citrus to generate viable seed.
Although the Shaddock/Pomelo is the parent of the grapefruit, it exceeds its descendant in size of fruit and tree. The Pomelo trees grow large and tend to have drooping foliage. It tends to need a warmer climate than either grapefruit or orange, though strains of Pomelo have been developed in India and China that are more cold tolerant. Two varieties were recognized in Florida during the 19th and 20th centuries, although both were marketed under the name Shaddock, and neither enjoyed any large scale production as a consumer crop. The Mammoth, was “oblate, 5-6 inches diameter, flesh firm, white, sweetish, bitter; and the Pink, oblate-pyriform, 6 x 6 5/9 inches, flesh rough, pink, bitterish, subacid.” (H. H. Hume). The fruit remained in cultivation as much as breeding stock to use in the creation of new varieties of grapefruit and other citrus.
Image: Chinese Shaddock, U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705, Deborah Passmore, 1910