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The most tantalizing alternative lemon is the Variegated Pink. A mutant found on an ordinary Eureka lemon tree in Burbank, Calif., around 1930, its immature fruit has green and white stripes; the older fruit loses the stripes and develops flesh pigmented pink from lycopene, which also colors pink grapefruit. The trees are usually poor producers, perhaps because their variegated leaves are low in chlorophyll.

The few available Variegated Pinks fetch $6 a pound wholesale in New York, where restaurants like DavidBurke & Donatella snap them up. They taste much like regular lemons, though when mature can be less acidic, with a tutti-frutti flavor.

The most astonishing lemon variant, known to just a few people, is a Eureka mutant with orange skin and flesh. It was discovered 10 years ago at a grove in Saticoy, Calif., managed by Paramount Citrus, a large commercial grower.

At one time the company had seven acres of the trees in Ventura County, Calif., but it didn't see much potential and pulled them out, David W. Krause, the president, said in a telephone interview. Only one young tree of the variety, named Golden Eureka, exists in a lush 550-acre grove of normal lemons in Somis. The fruit is sort of like a cat that barks: it tastes like a lemon but has the color of an orange.