This fruit can be called a "Diorchite," as it is a twin apple shaped much like two testicles, one of which is longer than the other. The larger apple was shaped like a pear-shaped colocynth, while the other imitated a rounder testicle. They shared a single stem, though it was more closely attached to the larger apple. Both were a yellowish color verging on red.

In the upper part of each fruit, where the flower usually clings, a navel was visible; near the navel of the smaller one was a cleft mimicking female genitalia, as if Nature had intended to create another navel there, as can be seen in Illustration XXVII.

Thus Nature, often straying from its aim in plants, produces monsters, as we have frequently observed, especially in apples. This year, for instance, we saw an apple that seemed to mimic a wine gourd; it had the shape of a round vessel with a neck attached to the upper part, as if a small head were sitting atop the apple. From this, we gather that Nature intended to create two apples, but from a lack of material, it produced one large, perfect apple first, and then another very small one, just as often happens with many other fruits.

Pears are closely related to apples and are also not without their monstrous fruits. The pear is a very well-known tree, growing everywhere in Europe, so named because its fruits resemble a pyramid. There are many varieties based on size, shape, flavor, scent, color, and season—so many that Cordus, in his *History*, enumerated fifty kinds of pears that grow in orchards, fields, and other cultivated places.

Those that grow spontaneously in uncultivated places and woods are called "wild" pears. Among this wild variety, we once observed a remarkable and monstrous pear tree, a branch of which we show in Illustration XXVIII. This tree was bristling with the thorns that wild pears usually abound in, and it produced pears of diverse sizes, shapes, and colors. However, they were tasteless and unpleasant to the palate, as wild fruits of this kind tend to be. For this reason, this tree could not be counted among the *telesphora dendra* (fruit-bearing trees), since trees of that category produce uniform, consistent, and timely fruit.

A little earlier, when we were discussing monstrous plant leaves, we mentioned the Median apple and the orange. We must speak of them now because of a fruit given to us that displayed a truly monstrous form.

There are three types of these fruits: citrons, lemons, and oranges, which all belong to the same genus. Among these, we should consider the oranges for a moment; they were perhaps named after the town of Arantium in Achaia, or the Aranea people of Persia—unless we wish to follow those who call them *arantia* as if they were *aurantia*, from the golden (*aureus*) color of the fruit. For this reason, Virgil called them "golden apples." Whether these are the "Cestian apples" mentioned by Galen, the "Martian apples" mentioned by Suetonius in his life of Domitian, or the *Citrangula* of Avicenna and Mesue is not a matter for the present discussion.

These fruits vary in the acidity, sweetness, or moderate flavor of their juice. The sweet ones have a smooth rind, while the acidic ones have a harder and rougher one. Some have a greener skin, others more yellowish. Some are found without seeds, while others carry two types of seeds in the same fruit. The rind of our local ones is bitter, though in some places they grow with a sweet and pleasant rind. They also vary in shape, sometimes round, sometimes long, and with a more or less wrinkled rind. But truly monstrous was that apple once given to us as a gift, whose rind was covered with many long bumps; when sliced, six triangular segments containing seeds appeared in the same fruit, as is shown in Illustration XXVIIII.

There, too, was drawn the likeness of a sweet lemon, both whole and sliced, in which nine triangular segments were visible. In Rome, it is called a *Limoncello* because of the appendages it has on its leaves, although it seems to belong more to the orange than to the lemon, especially since it shares a similar shape and color. When sliced, this fruit revealed nine triangles, each containing two seeds. But it is a matter of great wonder that it consists of no flesh, only a very thin outer rind and a succulent interior; therefore, in terms of its internal parts, it seems related to neither the lemon nor the orange, except that those