#tachibana #citrus #orange #kitsu #mandarin
Modern #Chinese uses this #hanzi to describe Tangerines and Oranges and Mandarins and probably just small oranges in earlier time?
In #Japanese though the #kanji is Tachibana a subspecies of Citrus.
However in Vietnam if I can trust my dictionaries the archaic form *gwuit developed a semantic split with one word used to describe the citrus fruit we call kumquats and the other pronunciation for mandarin oranges.
Part of the reason are this is the quest for a small edible sweet orange.
Citrus growers in China and Japan hybridised varieties to create the range of fruits we have today.
Apparently the native Tachibana "mandarin" / orange was grown for its peel and flowers with the peel and rind used for medicines and the flowers for their scent.
I will be sharing some poems about the scent of orange blossom in the next posts.
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