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In 1922 the Japanese botanist Tyozaburo Tanaka was able to use various bizarre plants in the Botanical Garden of Florence and in the Hanbury Garden in La Mortola for field studies. In 1927 he published his research results under the title "Bizzarria - a clear case of a periclinal chimera" in the Journal of Genetics. He wrote:

Critical study of this much discussed graft-hybrid thus brings us to the conclusion that this is a clear case of periclinal chimera, a citron core covered by sour orange coating. The citronpeel, suggestive of being a sectorial chimera, is merely the penetration of citron element through the covering, just as the pure citron shoot comes out from a bizaarria branch. A pure sour orange shoot is similarly formed by replacing the citron element of the central portion, and in the same way the sour orange sector may be present among the segment of fruit partly replacing the citron carpels. The sectorial formation of the pulp occasionally mentioned is explained by such a partial replacement of the internal element by the outside s substance. The trifacial nature of graft-hybrids is only explained by such replacement of antagonistic elements through invasion both outward and inward.
Graft-hybrid chimeras are unstable in their nature; the union between the outside and inside elements can readily be broken, the single element occupying the whole tissue wherever there is a chance, because this condition is more stable than the original dual formation. This reversion to the original parent seems to be analogous to the vegetative reversion associated with bud variation, but the latter case is better explained by reversible allelomorphic transformation or by chromosomal mutation, rather than the chimeral construction of the original bud-mutant.

Tanaka already had problems finding suitable Bizzarria plants for his investigations. In 1937 Bizzarre fruits from a private French citrus collection were shown once again at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. After that the trace of the Bizzarria loses itself for a long time.

Between 1937 and 1980, according to our research to date, there are no indications of the existence of bizarria.

We owe the rediscovery of the Florentine Bizzarria to an Italian gardener. In 1980 Paolo Galeotti noticed in the citrus collection of the Villa Castello a bittersweet orange tree shoot which struck him because of its strangely shaped leaves. Galeotti's assumption that this could be the Bizzarria, which had been missing for many years, was confirmed in the following years. The scion, grafted on a suitable rootstock, showed the typical characteristics of the Florentine Bizzarria and later produced their characteristic fruits.

The Bizzarria of Florence