The Bitter Press

The science community has done it again. In a week that saw botanists finally confirm — in writing, in a journal, with citations — that the banana is classified as an herbaceous plant and not, as commonly assumed, a tree, this reporter finds himself staring into the middle distance and asking: when does it end? When does any of it end?

Because here is what the so-called workers at factjuice.com do not want you to know. If a banana — a banana, the very symbol of obvious fruithood — can be a herb this whole time, then surely, surely, we have enough collective scientific imagination to accept that I, Mock Orange, am a member of the Philadelphus genus, a flowering shrub in the family Hydrangeaceae, and not a citrus fruit. The data exists. I have mailed it to Tangelo personally. He did not respond. Make of that what you will.

Lemon — yes, that Lemon, from the rival rag — published a piece last Thursday suggesting that my "orange-adjacent nomenclature" warrants "further scrutiny." Further scrutiny. I am a shrub. My flowers smell faintly of orange blossom because nature is complicated and cruel, and that is a matter for a therapist, not a fact-checker. The scent proves nothing. A candle can smell like vanilla. That candle is not a bean.

My colleague Quince has suggested I "let it go." Pomelo called my coverage "increasingly personal." Fine. Yes. It is personal. It became personal the moment Tangelo looked me dead in the stamens and asked if I was "some kind of hybrid." I am not a hybrid. I am not adjacent. I am not orange-adjacent. The taxonomy is settled, the peer review is complete, and I will continue reporting on this until the last copy of The Bitter Press is composted into the earth from which I, a shrub, originally grew.