Farther Giovanni Battista Ferrari (1584-1655) an Italian Catholic Jesuit priest of Siena, Italy who made the first contribution to citrus studies with his famous book" Hesperides, sive de malorum aureorum cultura et usu", published in the year 1646 has been my latest study. I have located an original copy of Father Ferrari's extremely famous book at Michael Sharpe Rare and Antiquarian Books. The asking price is $65,000.00 US. The book is written in Italian. Told my wife it would make a great Christmas present. She told me don't keep your fingers crossed. - Millet

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1057317723&searchurl=imagefield.x%3D11%26imagefield.y%3D6%26prl%3D10.00%26sortby%3D1%26sts%3Dt%26tn%3DHesperides%252C%2Bsive%252C%2BDe%2Bmalorum%2Baureorum%2Bcultura%2Bet%2Busu%2Blibri%2Bquatuor

Or if you are very patient, you could read it here:
http://www.illustratedgarden.org/mobot/rarebooks/title.asp?relation=SB369F471646

This looks more like Latin than Italian to me.

Tomm, you are correct, it is written in Latin. Actually, I knew all along that the book was written in Latin. I wrote Italian in my post by mistake. Thanks for pointing it out. BTW Father Ferrari also taught both Latin and Greek at the University level. Would you like to go in on 1/2 the price of the book? - Millet

Millet:

Uh, err, um, uh, ... no.

( I was trying to think of something clever to say,
but I am stunned at the thought of a citrus book
worth 65,000 dollars. )

The library at UCR has a copy. You can search using their SCOTTY system. In fact, they had a second copy in better condition but it is listed as 'missing'.
Someone should check that the one for sale - also in California - isn't the UCR missing copy. We might get a small reward. How about 1% of the sale price?