Media and Assyria, though Palladius in the fourth century seems to have
been familiar with it, and it was known in Greece at the time of
Theophrastus." But if Oranges were grown in Italy or Greece in the time
of Pliny and Palladius, they did not continue in cultivation. Europe
owes the introduction or reintroduction to the Portuguese, who brought
them from the East, and they were grown in Spain in the eleventh
century. The first notice of them in Italy was in the year 1200, when a
tree was planted by St. Dominic at Rome. The first grown in France is
said to have been the old tree which lived at the Orangery at
Versailles till November, 1876, and was called the Grand Bourbon. "In
1421 the Queen of Navarre gave the gardener the seed from Pampeluna;
hence sprang the plant, which was subsequently transported to Chantilly.
In 1532 the Orange tree was sent to Fontainebleau, whence, in 1684,
Louis XIV. transferred it to Versailles, where it remained the largest,
finest, and most fertile member of the Orangery, its head being 17yds.
round." It is not likely that a tree of such beauty should be growing so
near England without the English gardeners doing their utmost to
establish it here. But the first certain record is generally said to be
in 1595, when (on the authority of Bishop Gibson) Orange trees were
planted at Beddington, in Surrey, the plants being raised from seeds
brought into England by Sir Walter Raleigh. The date, however, may be
placed earlier, for in Lyte's "Herbal" (1578) it is stated that "In this
countrie the Herboristes do set and plant the Orange trees in there
gardens, but they beare no fruite without they be wel kept and defended
from cold, and yet for all that they beare very seldome." There are no
Oranges in Gerard's catalogue of 1596, and though he describes the trees
in his "Herbal," he does not say that he then grew them or had seen them
growing. But by 1599 he had obtained them, for they occur in his
catalogue of that date under the name of "Malus orantia, the Arange or
Orange tree," so that it is certainly very probable that Shakespeare may
have seen the Orange as a living tree.

As to the beauty of the Orange tree, there is but one opinion. Andrew
Marvel described it as--

"The Orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night."

_Bermudas._

George Herbert drew a lesson from its power of constant fruiting--

"Oh