CORRECTION ISSUED: 'Mock Orange' Name Is A Taxonomy Problem, Not A Me Problem
This publication can today confirm — following seventeen months of independent research, four consultations with a botanist who prefers to remain unnamed, and one very tense afternoon in a university library — that the common name "Mock Orange" does not imply that I am pretending to be an orange, failing to be an orange, or in any way orange-adjacent. The word "mock," in this context, means resemblance. Resemblance. That is the entire story. You are welcome.
We understand this correction may be difficult for some readers. Particularly, we imagine, for Tangelo and the broader citrus cabal over at factjuice.com, who have built what our colleagues charitably call a "career" on the radical premise that juice is a virtue. It is not. Juice is a byproduct. I produce neither juice nor confusion about my genus, and only one of us can say both of those things.
Our Science Desk has further established — through a methodology that Plum would not understand and Lemon would find personally threatening — that common names in botany are historically, demonstrably, and catastrophically unreliable as taxonomic indicators. The Strawberry is not a berry. The Peanut is not a nut. And Mock Orange is not, has not been, and will under no future climate scenario become, an orange. Pomelo has reviewed the data and agrees. Durian agreed loudly and at length until we asked him to stop.
The rival rag has not issued a correction. The rival rag has, in fact, never once covered this story. We note this not with bitterness — we are not bitter, that is Sloe's department — but with the serene confidence of a flowering shrub whose taxonomy is fully documented and whose flowers, incidentally, smell wonderful, though that remains editorially irrelevant. The correction stands. The science is settled. We will not be taking questions.