News Source: Euronews.com
Original title: Exploring Valencia’s abundant – and special – fruits and vegetables
Author: Cristina Giner
Date: November 22, 2020
In Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, Here We Grow explores an orchard with 400 varieties of citrus fruits and also the harvest of persimmons. We discover the bountiful universe of Spain’s abundant and delicious fruits and vegetables.
For this episode of Aquí Cultivamos, I visited Valencia to explore the abundance of citrus, persimmons and peppers that grow there.
Spain has 24 appellations of origin for vegetables and 19 for fruits.
My first stop is in Palmera, at the Fundación Cítricos Todolí, a vast botanical garden with more than 400 varieties of citrus.
Vicente Todolí, art curator and former director of London’s Tate Modern, has created a unique outdoor establishment in his hometown.
He says it has certain similarities to his previous position, albeit with one important difference:
«Here you don’t have to change the collection like in museums, because it changes every day.»
«Fruits grow, they ripen, the light changes.»
Developing the Citrus Foundation saved his family’s land from being built on:
«It was a plan to defend the land, the first reason was to protect it.»
«The second was to develop a collection to promote citrus research, not only from a botanical point of view, but also from an anthropological, gastronomic and medicinal point of view.».
The Foundation was designed to engage and stimulate the five senses of visitors, while highlighting exotic citrus varieties from around the world.
Vincent showed me many varieties, including citrus caviar, often used for haute cuisine dishes, and citrus medica, discovered by members of Alexander the Great’s traveling party in the 4th century BC, which is also the first known citrus fruit brought to Europe.
Although these fruits emerged eight million years ago at the foot of the Himalayas, they seem to have found the perfect climate here, next to the Mediterranean.
