Hesperides with nuptial presents for the latter, and among them the goddess of Gaia, with branches having golden apples growing on them as a wedding gift. Hera, greatly admiring these, begged of Gaea to plant them in her gardens, which extended as far as Mount Atlas. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard. In the myth of the Judgement of Paris, it was from the Garden that Eris, Goddess of
Hesperides Discord, obtained the Apple of Discord, which led to the Trojan War. In later years it was thought that the "golden apples" might have actually been oranges, a fruit unknown to Europe and the Mediterranean before the Middle Ages. Under this assumption, the Greek botanical name chosen for all citrus species was "Hesperidoeidē" (Ἑσπεριδοειδῆ, "hesperidoids") and even today the Greek word for the orange fruit is πορτοκάλι (Portokáli)--after the country of Portugal in Iberia near where the Garden of the Hesperides grew. After Heracles completed his first ten Labours, Eurystheus gave him two more claiming that neither the Hydra counted