Introduce lime.

Lime, Rutaceae citrus is a small perennial evergreen arbor plant. Many branches, hard leaves, dark green; The leaves are oval, smooth and irregular; Flowers are small, shallow cup-shaped, thick and white; Stamens are many and styles are short; The ovary is spherical and the stigma is large. The flowering period is from March to May, and the fruiting period is from September to June.

Lime is native to Indonesia and Vietnam, and now it is cultivated in many countries and regions with warm climate, such as Italy, West Indies, China, Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong. Lime is warm, resistant to shade, drought and heat, and the requirements for soil are not strict, so we should choose soil with good depth and drainage performance. There are several propagation methods of lime, such as seedling planting, layering planting and grafting propagation, among which grafting propagation is the best.

According to the Dictionary of Medicinal Plants, lime has the effects of helping digestion and detoxifying, and is mainly used to treat headaches, coughs, eye diseases, bronchitis and other diseases.

2. Botanical history

The branches are irregular and the thorns are thick and short. The leaves are slightly hard, and the leaves in Hebei are short and obvious; Leaf blade is broadly ovoid or oval, 5-8 cm long and 2-4 cm wide, with blunt or extremely short tip, round base and thin blunt teeth at leaf margin. Racemes, with as many as 7 flowers, sparse single flowers axillary; Calyx shallowly cupular, 5-4-lobed; Petals 5, 4 thin, slightly thicker, longer than 1- 1.2 cm, white; 20-25 stamens; The style is very short, about as long as the stigma, the ovary is spherical and the stigma is large.

The stalk of lime is thick and short, and the fruit is spherical, oval or obovate, usually 4-5 cm in diameter. There are short nipples at the top of the fruit, the peel is thin and smooth, light green and yellow, the oil cells are protruding, and the petals are 9- 12. The pulp tastes sour. The seeds are small and few, oval, with smooth seed coat and ivory cotyledons. The flowering period is from March to May, and the fruiting period is from September to June.

Produced in Luxi, Yunnan. Born on the roadside at low altitude, semi-wild, probably imported from Myanmar. Some gardens in Guangdong and Guangxi have also been introduced in recent years. It is cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions of the world.