Villa Bizzarria
Meet the tree
As its name suggests, Bizzarria is an unusual citrus. Its fruit can combine the characteristics of sour orange and citron-like lemon, with irregularly distributed surfaces and colours. Some fruit resemble one component more closely; others bring both together in a single striking form.
Botanically it is a graft chimera: genetically different tissues coexist in the same plant. This is distinct from the sexual hybridisation that produces many other citrus varieties.
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The villa’s historical account traces its discovery to the Panciatichi family’s Torre degli Agli estate near Florence in the 1640s. Pietro Nati described it in 1674. It entered the Medici citrus collections and became an object of botanical curiosity.
The collection document also recounts its apparent disappearance and its rediscovery by Paolo Galeotti in the 1970s. Its continued cultivation makes it a living link with the extraordinary citrus collections of historic Italian gardens.
