In the course of introducing friends to anime and fanfics the question
has often been asked of me, why are lemon fics called that?  I have
never had an answer.  So now I put the question to you.

This just goes to prove Gary's point that people just don't seem to know
how to read the FAQ.  I know for a fact it is on the FFML website, and
that a copy of it is sent to you when you join, so my question is why do
some people refuse to read it?  They don't call them FREQUENTLY asked
question for nothing you know.  Taken directly from my copy of the FAQ
is the definition as follows:

That doesn't answer the question, the question was "_WHY_ are they called
lemons?"  Not "_WHAT_ is a lemon?"  I believe that he wants to know where 
'lemon' came from as the genre name of sexually explicit type stories.
(Which is actually something I've wondered myself.)