Sam writes:
Must be the Persian Lime, as the other main lime is said to be called just “lime” in the US.
A factoid. Navel Oranges come from a mutation of a single plant in Brazil. All the rest are cuttings.
I’m guessing since these are crossings that all citrus varieties come from cuttings.
Let’s hope they don’t start having fungus problems like bananas. I can’t remember the name, but I remember when I was young bananas tasted better. All of that breed were killed off by fungus. They didn’t seem to rot as fast either. Bananas rot super fast now. I think the present breed is succumbing to fungus also and will not be around too long.
If you ever want to read about breeding plants and crossing them, Luther Burbank is good to read about. He wasn’t an academic, so academic types hate him, but he was a great plant breeder. He has made a stupendous amount of edible useful plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burbank
He’s got a lot of books at the internet archive. A couple.
Yes! Sam is correct! The other lime is indeed the Persian lime. Another part of the question asked where this Persian lime first appeared and when. Curiously, it did not first appear in Iran where one might expect to have shown up. Instead, the Persian Lime made its first appearance in…drum roll…Morocco! I am not sure when it first appeared, but it was in the recent past.
The other main citrus that appeared only in recent yeas is the grapefruit. It shows up first in the Caribbean around 1700! All of the others except the Persian lime go much further back than that.