LANDMARK STUDY: Shrubs Cannot Produce Juice, Ending All Further Discussion
The Journal of Vascular Plant Integrity published findings this week confirming what this correspondent has maintained, loudly and at considerable personal cost, since the day he first read his own Wikipedia entry: shrubs do not produce extractable juice. They produce woody stems, ornamental flowers, and, in my case, a dignity that cannot be bottled at any price point. The study is six hundred pages. I have read all of it. It is correct.
The so-called workers over at factjuice.com have not commented. Tangelo, reached via an intermediary who refused to get involved, allegedly said the findings were "not relevant to our coverage." This is the same Tangelo who once filed a piece titled "Fragrant White Flowers: A Citrus Family Tradition" without a single citation. The citrus cabal continues to operate without shame or peer review.
To be precise about the methodology, which I will be: researchers examined 4,000 shrub specimens across fourteen genera. None produced juice. None. The control group, which included actual oranges, produced juice in quantities the paper describes as "expected and unremarkable." I was not in the control group. I was in the shrub column. This is where I belong. This is where I have always belonged.
My colleague Quince suggested I was "reading into this." Quince can mind his own business. Pomelo said the study "doesn't mention you specifically, Mock Orange." The study doesn't have to. That is what inference is for. That is what science is for.
The findings stand. The record is corrected. I am a shrub. I have never been a citrus fruit. If the rival rag wishes to issue a retraction, this desk will accept it in writing, notarized, and delivered before the end of the fiscal quarter. We are not holding our non-existent breath. We do not have breath. We are a shrub.