Friends of the Arboretum Lecture

"The World According to Citrus"
David Mabberley, AM DSc, Director Emeritus, Botanic Gardens Sydney (Australia)

• Thursday, May 29, 2025 – 6:30 pm–8:00 pm

When the citrus expert, David Mabberley, was planning his 2025 book tour, the JC Raulston Arboretum was on his list and we couldn't say no. Come join us as we welcome one of the most respected research botanists in the world and author of the essential reference "Mabberley's Plant-book" for this month's Friends of the Arboretum Lecture as he shares his newest book, "Citrus: a World History."

The common citrus fruits – oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes – are not known in the wild. They are complex hybrids with Asian origins that, over thousands of years, have become embedded in Old World culture (medicine, religion, art and literature) and have now become the most significant of all tropical fruit crops worldwide. Yet their future is now endangered.

David Mabberley will explain their origins in the forests of southeast Asia, their spread by Arab traders to the West, their importance in Asian and Western society from the Moon Festival to the Feast of the Tabernacles and the origins of not only the House of Orange, 'limeys', the flags of New York and New Jersey, but also the Mafia.

Mabberley will delve into the growing threat of Huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening, and its potential impact on the future of citrus crops—and, by extension, your morning orange juice. However there's some hope being brought from work on Australian species of Citrus, unrecognized before his own research was published.

About David Mabberley

Image courtesy of Botanic Gardens of Sydney

Professor David J. Mabberley AM, DSc, is a British-born, Australian botanist, educator and author. Educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, and an Oxford don for 20 years, he was consecutively Director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens (Seattle, USA), Keeper of the Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (United Kingdom) and Executive Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney (Australia).

He is now Director Emeritus, Botanic Gardens of Sydney and Adjunct Professor, Macquarie University, Sydney, an Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College, University of Oxford (United Kingdom) and Emeritus Professor, University of Leiden (The Netherlands). Among his varied academic interests are the taxonomy of tropical trees, notably mahoganies and citrus, and the history of science and botanical art. Author of 27 books and over 350 peer-reviewed scientific papers, he is perhaps best known internationally as author of the award-winning "Mabberley's Plant-book: a Portable Dictionary of Plants, Their Classification and Uses," now in its fourth edition (2017). His recently published works include the award-winning books, "Joseph Banks' Florilegium" and "Painting by Numbers: the Life and Art of Ferdinand Bauer" (both 2017), followed by "The Extraordinary Story of the Apple" and "Botanical Revelation: European Encounters with Australian Plants before Darwin" (both 2019), "The Peter Crossing Collection: an Illustrated Catalogue" (2022) and "Citrus: a World History" (2024).

Cost

Free for JCRA Members and their guests.

Registration

Advance registration is required since space is limited. Register through our online registration form.

Cancellation

If your plans change and you're not able to attend, please email jcraprograms@ncsu.edu as soon as you know so that we can make your spot available for another member to attend.

Location

Ruby C. McSwain Education Center, JC Raulston Arboretum at NC State University, 4415 Beryl Road, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Directions

Need directions? Click here.

Parking

Free parking is available at the JC Raulston Arboretum and along Beryl Road.

Questions

Contact the JCRA Education Team at jcraprograms@ncsu.edu for more information about this program.