For some reason, people love to write about how weird the grapefruit is. They make a big deal of it arising outside of Asia. They go on about its novel and strong drug interactions and act like its name is akin to something from an alien language. But, is the grapefruit all that strange? And, is the history of the grapefruit highly unusual?
I suspect this “the grapefruit is so strange” stuff has a root in one authoritative source that has caused authors to repeat it and try their hardest to justify the assertion. One of the strangest articles I’ve seen is one on AtlasObscura that claims that the grapefruit is one big oddball, calling it “The Weirdest Fruit on the Planet.”
The piece then does a fantastic job of explaining the history of the fruit while showing that there is nothing particularly strange about it, all the while continuing to insist on its strangeness. This insistence on the oddball nature of the grapefruit is stranger than the fruit! I’d say the durian, which smells like death combined with everything awful, is a bit weirder, to name but one example.
So, the simple answer to the questions I posed in the opening paragraph is NO. There is nothingso weird about the grapefruit. The grapefruit is a hybrid citrus fruit. All citrus fruits are native to Asia.
You may read that the grapefruit is highly unusual because it evolved outside of Asia. This is not so. The grapefruit is a cross between the pomelo fruit and the sweet orange, both of which come from Asia. So, while the grapefruit hybrid event happened outside of Asia, the fruit did not “evolve” independently of other citrus. There is nothing very strange about two citrus fruits producing a hybrid. In fact, it’s the rule rather than the exception. And there is nothing strange about citrus fruits being planted and cultivated outside of Asia.
Citrus Fruits
All citrus trees are native to Asia. It is thought that the common citrus fruits we know today, oranges, tangerines, lemons, and limes, all came from three wild ancestors that grew in Asia, the citron, the mandarin, and the pomelo.
Citrus fruits hybridize very easily through cross-pollination. This happens even between citrus varieties with very different characteristics. So, for example, a citrus tree that bears tiny fruits will happily cross-breed with one that has giant fruits. If you plant two different citrus trees anywhere near each other, they will hybridize and produce something novel. This has happened over thousands of years in Asia and will happen anywhere citrus grows.
While this is not certain, most sources agree that the grapefruit arose from a hybridization event between the pomelo and sweet orange.
The Origin and History of the Grapefruit
The first thing to know about the origin of the grapefruit is that we don’t truly know. There are stories, sure, but no definitive history. As soon as I started researching the history of the fruit, I found it scattered and inconsistent. Even those authors who spent years looking under the table and sofa to find as many missing puzzle pieces as possible have left gaps.
We are fairly certain that the grapefruit did not originate in China, or anywhere near, as mentioned. It also did not come from Europe. There are mentions of the “Shaddock” growing in Jamaica by 1696 and in Barbados by 1707, and mentions of the “Forbidden Fruit” and “Smaller Shaddock” by 1789. The latter two names seem to refer to the grapefruit. 1
The Pomelo
The pomelo (Citrus maxima or C.grandiss), native to Southeast Asia, is the largest of the citrus fruits and one of the natural ancestors of all known citrus varieties, together with the citron and mandarin. It is an ancestor of several important cultivated citrus varieties. The fruit has a thick green to yellow skin and a light-colored flesh that tastes like a sweeter version of the grapefruit,, although with some of the same bitterness. The white pith is much thicker than the grapefruit and is considered inedible. 2
Another name for the pomelo (pummelo) is the Shaddock. This nickname comes from a Captain Shaddock of the East India Company who in 1683 is claimed to have brought seeds to the West Indies, possibly from the Malay Archipelago. The Shaddock or Pomelo is mentioned by Hans Sloane, a contemporary of Shaddock who wrote about it in his 1701 A Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Neives, S. Christophers and Jamaica.
In Barbados, the shaddocks surpass those of Jamaica in goodness. The seeds of this was frist brought to Barbados by one Captain Shaddock, Commander of an East India ship, who touc’d at that Island in his Passage to England, and left the seed there.
A 1683 issue of The Kingston Times and Herald also mentioned a delivery of seeds to Jamaica, saying that Captain Shaddock hand-delivered some seeds from an Asian plant or tree to William Jones, who was a planter from the Mandeville (Jamaica) area.
We know little else about the story and the several other names for the “Shaddock” fruit are not helpful. Pomelo (pommel, pummlo, etc) may be Dutch in origin. But, the fruit has also been called pamplemoes in Dutch. Other names are Bali Lemon and Limau Besar. The grapefruit itself was at times called a pomelo.
The Birth of the Grapefruit
It is thought that the grapefruit is a result of a hybrid event between the pomelo and the sweet orange. Since the sweet orange is a hybrid of the pomelo and mandarin, this is known as “backcrossed” hybridization and explains why 60% of grapefruit DNA comes from the pomelo.
While it seems fairly certain that the grapefruit was growing on Barbados by the late 1700s. The first recorded mention of the fruit was in 1750 by Griffiths Hughes, the rector of St. Lucy’s parish in Barbados, who called it the “forbidden fruit.” We do not know how long it took for the fruit to spread throughout the islands and begin being cultivated there.
There are different stories about when the grapefruit was introduced to Florida. The most accepted account is that the grapefruit was introduced to Florida by Count Odet Phillipe, a Frenchman who came to Tampa Bay in 1823, bringing seeds of grapefruit and several other citrus fruits from the Bahamas.
Phillippe is said to have given seeds from his grove to many of his friends and even today, many heirloom seedlings in Florida are claimed to have come from this source. Many of today’s varieties of grapefruit arose in Florida and cultivation of the fruit spread from there to other places in the states. 3,1
The Grapefruit Name
When the fruit came to be called the grapefruit is not certain but it presumably refers to the fruit’s growing in grapelike clusters. While the fruit is nothing like a grape except for this passing similarity, which is not all that similar in truth, explorers and other observers throughout history have named many fruits based on their superficial appearance. The avocado being called an “Alligator Pear”, for instance.
I would even argue that while the ‘gooseberry’ was not named because of its similarity to a goose, or even because geese eat it, it’s still a fruit that was named for its appearance. The name ultimately comes from the German word Kräuselbeere, which translates to “curled or crimped berries.” That is not exactly a creative name.
Much more interesting from an etymological sense that “grapefruit” is the ordinary-seeming name for the orange. It is much more uncanny, to my way of thinking, that the name of the fruit entered the English language before we started using the word orange for the color! Unlike other non-basic colors, whose names are just a descriptor of the basic color of which they are a shade, like crimson red, jade blue, or hunter green, orange, and its namesake, the fruit, stand alone in being a color with no other name that came from a specific object. While orange is a shade of red, if we say “orange red” we would be specifying another shade. In my book, that makes the name of the orange a lot more interesting than the name of the grapefruit, which is just a case of a lack of creative thought on the name of some namer or other. 4
Grapefruit Drug Interactions
Grapefruit shares its ability to interact with drugs with its ancestor, the pomelo. The fact that grapefruit juice interacts with many drugs leads folks to believe that something uncanny is happening. How can one food interfere with so many different drugs?
It would be uncanny if grapefruit randomly interacted with so many drugs, but this is not the case. First, grapefruit does not directly interact with drugs. Instead, it binds with a chemical in your gut called CYP3A4. This enzyme reduces the absorption of many drugs by breaking them down or metabolizing them. When chemicals in grapefruit juice bind with these enzymes, they cannot bind to the drug. This more drug enters the body than expected, which can lead to greater side effects, etc.
On the other hand, grapefruit is known to cause the opposite problem with a few drugs, such as fexofenadine. Grapefruit can cause less Fexofenadine, a seasonal allergy med to enter the bloodstream by blocking drug transporters. However, the labels for the drug also advise to not take them with orange juice or apple juice.
While all of this does make grapefruit an unusual case in terms of drug interactions, it is not uncanny, strange, or bewildering. Again, grapefruit does not just so happen to interact with a lot of drugs. It just so happens to interact with a relatively few chemicals in the body, enzymes and transporters. While this may be somewhat unusual, it is not earth-shattering as plant compounds that interact with enzymes or transporters in the body are not uncommon.
Certain flavonoids, tannins, and catechins can interact with certain enzymes, while some flavonoids, alkaloids, terpenoids, phenolic acids, and glucosinolates can bind to and interfere with the activity of transporters, particularly those that affect the absorption, distribution, or elimination of drugs. 5, 6
See More About Grapefruit Drug Interactions
Is It True That Grapefruit Interacts With Many Drugs?
Conclusion: A Lot of Fuss About Normal Events
As far as we know, the pomelo was brought from Asia to an island or islands in the West Indies, probably Barbados, sometime in the 1600s. There is nothing unusual about this, as any citrus fruit that occurs outside can only occur if it was brought there from Asia or its ancestors were brought from Asia. At some point, the pomelo crossbred with the sweet orange which was also growing in the West Indies on one or more islands. Again, there is nothing unusual about this as the hybridization of citrus fruits is par for the course and happens readily.
Then, the grapefruit spread to other places, first to Florida, and then later to other states, before spreading to Europe. This too, is not unusual and is how cultivated fruits spread, from one place to another.
The name of the fruit is similar to other fruits that were named according to a passing resemblence to something else. No matter that the grapefruit has nothing to do with grapes. The alligator pears, or avacodo, has nothing to do with alligators or pears. Plum tomatoes are certainly not related to plums.
The pomelo interferes with the absorption of certain drugs and so does its progeny, the grapefruit. While both interfere with an unusual number of drugs it is a myth that grapefruit “interacts” with the drugs. It does not interact with them directly, but instead binds to a chemical in the gut responsible for reducing the absorption of many drug. In one other case, grapefruit blocks the action of a drug transporter, thus interfering with the transport of the drug Fexofenadine.
It just so happens that grapefruit interferes with a very important enzyme in the gut. Since there are many plant compounds that can interfere with enzymes and transporters, this in itself is not unusual. That it happens to be an enzyme important in many drugs, is something that is bound to occur. For all we know, there are many plants that we don’t eat that may have similar properties. That it also interferes with Fexofenadine through a different pathway is not enough to claim the grapefruit the weirdest fruit ever.
In other words, this is all a lot of fuss about a fairly normal citrus fruit that occurred in the way many citrus fruits occur. It just so happens that it interferes with more than its share of drugs. Once we remove the grapefruit’s origin from the realm of “weirdness” all we have are its drug interactions. Since there are many more fruits with unusual properties, the grapefruit has plenty of competition and would easily lose the “Weirdest Fruit” competition.
There are even other citrus fruits that can easily be claimed to be wider, like the Buddha’s hand or the Finger Lime, both of which are pictured above.
- Sinclair, Walton B.. The Grapefruit: Its Composition, Physiology, and Products. United States, University of California, Division of Agricultural Sciences, 1972.
- The Cambridge World History of Food. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2000. It is known as Yòu Zi in Mandarin, Jau in Cantonese, Bưởi in Vietnamese, Limau Abong in Malay, and Suha in Tagalog.
- Laszlo, Pierre. Citrus: A History. United Kingdom, University of Chicago Press, 2008.
- Kastan, David Scott, and Stephen Farthing. “Color or Fruit? On the Unlikely Etymology of ‘Orange.’” Literary Hub, 3 Apr. 2019, lithub.com/color-or-fruit-on-the-unlikely-etymology-of-orange/.
- Kang, Joohyun et al. “Plant ABC Transporters.” The Arabidopsis Book vol. 9 (2011): e0153. doi:10.1199/tab.0153
- Grapefruit Juice and Some Drugs Don’t Mix. Food and Drug Administration. July 1, 2021. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/grapefruit-juice-and-some-drugs-dont-mix