Tom (if I may call you that), I am here in a search for truth even though my
initial statement might have seemed arrogant.  Thanks for caring to help me
find a bit more of a rather elusive commodity, truth.  And please understand
that my view, although different than yours is not meant to invalidate what
you've posited or will posit.

Thomas E. Billings wrote:

> * wild oranges are sour oranges. Sweet oranges do not exist in the
> wild! (They are exclusively the product of human cultivation.)

I've heard this before and don't necessarily subscribe.  Oh yes, I know that
most commercial oranges are grafted onto sour orange rootstock.  However, the
thought that a sweet orange miraculously arrived overnight in a wild world of
sour oranges is beyond my belief.  Please bear (pun intended) with me for
three points and then let's return to the sour orange theory.

Point one: the persimmon.  Is there anything that can pucker the mouth as well
as an unripe persimmon?  Its astringency is legendary.  However, the fruit,
once ripened, is delectable.  I submit that Mother Nature (a very good friend
of mine) is simply saying, "Not yet, children---I'll tell you when it's time
to spread the seed."  And the seed is surely spread because there is not a
fruit-eating animal that can resist ripe persimmons.

Point two: *green* apples.  This fruit, perhaps the most popular in the US can
do quite a number on the tummies of youngsters who eat more than a few from
wild or cultivated trees.  Few youngsters violate Mother Nature's "not yet"
rule a second time.  However, can anyone argue against the life force of a
ripe apple?  How empty an appleless world would be.

Point three: my thornless blackberries.  I can hand you a berry one day before
its time and the sourness will make you shiver.  If you were to wait but a
single day, you would be rewarded with a true delicacy.  MN is very, very
clear about when it's proper to eat her seed bearers.

Back to the sour orange.  Can this really be a food for man?  Could a sour
orange actually be instead a degenerate form of the sweet orange?  Could sour
oranges have disappeared eons ago but for their value only as rootstock?
Perhaps they lost the gene to ripen like other fruit.  Quite honestly, I
consider a sour orange about as important in the diet of man as an Osage
orange, which may not be an orange at all.

In a discussion of the relationship of MN offering up exactly the right taste
to lure man into partaking of certain fruits, so as to spread the seed, can we
set the sour orange aside?

> * check the archives for my Wild vs. Cultivated Fruit Comparison table.

Could that be the chart I reviewed on a web page as suggested by Jean-Louis
Tu?  If so, I thank you.  If not, I'll do more reading.

> * Some wild fruit is sweet, but most is sour/bitter.  Also in the archives
> (sometime Spring 1997: try keyword: "fruit toxin"), is an article
> on the role of toxins in fruits. It turns out that fruits contain toxins
> for a number of reasons:
> -- regulate which species eat the fruit (i.e., limit consumption to those
> species that distribute the seeds efficiently - e.g., if fruit design
> favors dispersion by monkeys instead of birds)
> -- control the amount of fruit eaten at one sitting, again to regulate
> seed dispersal

I find the above to be most interesting.  Is it possible to incorporate my
thoughts on temporary, or initial, toxicity in the form of sourness or
astringency?  But I think of this as temporary toxicity only.  And why would
you say "most is sour/bitter"?  You are describing fruits that humans are
clearly programmed to avoid.  I don't eat bitter and I recommend anyone else
avoid bitter.  My point is that humans are irrestibly guided to the sweetest
fruit they can find.  When the food adulterers don't interfere, that means
humans will get the best possible nutrition.  What person can eat a 10 Brix
apple when an 18 Brix apple is on the table?  That's not sweetness we're
talking about: that's pure nutrition.

> * Wild pineapples are usually inedible; ditto the wild precursors of the
> mango.

You've handed me a tough one here.  I was unaware that a pineapple was
actually a fruit and will have to do some reading.  The people in Florida that
I know who grow pineapples only plant the chopped off tops.  There are no
seeds involved they tell me.  And I'll check around on the mango.  Are you
saying that some "wild precursors" are edible and some are inedible?

> So, one could say that wild fruit must pass nature's REAL first law -
> survival of the fittest (not to be confused with phony versions
> promoted by fanatics).

Well obviously, the plant must be successful in spreading its seed or it
becomes history as I assume so many have.

> Wild fruit passes the law; cultivated fruit does
> not. Nature is interested in survival, not sugar content.

Good Grief! sugar is the basic building block of the plant world.  The plant
then takes minerals and combines them with the sugar to build all the other
essences of life.  Those plants that can produce the most sugar are the most
successful at growing, not just spreading seed.

> We humans
> are the ones with the sweet tooth! :-)

Indeed we are---exactly as Mother Nature designed us.  And she was wise enough
to plan it so we would get maximum mineralization if we simply headed for
maximum sweetness.  How simple---and beautiful---and emminently workable.

Again I thank you.  Perhaps you will be kind enough to bring out a few more
exceptions to my tendency to claim absolutes.

Regards,
Rex Harrill