The Origin of Oranges

“Orange” refers to any of several types of small fruits from evergreen trees or shrubs. Oranges are a hesperidium, a kind of modified berry with sectioned pulp inside a separable rind. The sweet orange, which accounts for 70% of global orange production, is a hybrid of ancient cultivated origin between pomelo (citrus maxima) and mandarin (citrus reticulata).

Oranges, and all citrus fruits, originated in the Southeast Himalayan foothills, in a region including the eastern area of Assam (India), northern Myanmar and western Yunnan (China). A fossil specimen from the late Miocene epoch (11.6 - 5.3 million years ago) from Lincang in Yunnan, China has traits that are characteristic of current major citrus groups, and provides evidence for the existence of a common Citrus ancestor within the Yunnan province approximately 8 million years ago.

Not much is known about the orange in human context prior to 314, when the first written evidence of the fruit appeared out of China. Fast forward 400 years... the sour orange (mix of Type 1 Mandarin and Pomelo) was spread by Moors following the Islamic Conquest in the 8th century. At the time, the Arab empire stretched from the borders of China and the Indian subcontinent across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe (including Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula). The sour orange was not palatable, but was used widely by herbalists to make medicinal syrup. Among the earliest text-based evidence of the sour orange outside Southeast Asia is from 940. Golden Lawns by al-Mas'udi stated that the sour orange was brought to Oman after 912. By the turn of the 11th century, the sour orange had spread through the modern day Arab world to Persia, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain, and subsequently to Sardinia and Sicily in Italy.

The word orange derives from a transliteration of the Sanskrit word for the orange tree: nāraṅga. Sanskirt is an ancient Indo-European classical language of South Asia. It is one of the twenty-two official languages of India. Its position in the cultures of South and Southeast Asia is akin to that of Latin and Greek in Europe and it has evolved into, as well as influenced, many modern languages of the world.

The Sanskirt word nāraṅga originates from Tamil, thought to be the longest surviving language. In Tamil, the word ārañcu translates to "6 and 5" implying 11. Oranges typically have 11 individual pieces and were named accordingly. Additionally, in Tamil, the root nurga translates to fragrant, suspected to be the origin of the 'n' at the beginning of the word in Sanskirt.

Before you go counting your orange pieces, I should probably mention that I have already done that. Out of the many, many oranges I counted the pieces of (sorry that is not a quantifiable number), mandarins had 10-12, and sweet oranges had 12-13. The oranges we eat today do not have the exact genetic make up as the ones the fruit was named for - but must be close!

Nāraṅga reached European languages through Persian (nārang) and Arabic (nāranj) variations of the term. The word ‘orange’ first appeared in the English language in the 12th century. It is thought to have come via the Old French word orenge. It is unclear if orenge derived directly from Persian or Arabic, or if it was calqued from the Italian word used for orange tree, arancio.

What came first, the colour or the fruit? The fruit. Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the colour was referred to as "yellow-red”, and saffron was sometimes used to describe the deep colour. This changed when orange trees were brought to Europe. The orange became widely available in the markets, and inspired the name for the colour. The first recorded use of 'orange' as a colour name in English was in the early 1500s.

The sweet orange reached Europe through the commercial trade routes established by land and sea. The first written mention of the sweet orange in Europe is in the archives of the Italian city of Savona, recorded in 1471; the first written distinction between the sweet orange and the sour orange is in a manuscript by Bartolomeo Platina from 1475, written for Pope Sixtus IV. The manuscript is preserved in the Vatican Library.

Christopher Columbus took seeds of sweet oranges across to the New World in ‘overseas survival kits’. They were planted on his second voyage, on the island of Hispaniola (Haiti) in 1493, where Columbus founded his first colony. Spanish settlers took the fruit to Florida between 1535 and 1565, and the fruits thrived in the subtropical climate. By 1579, orange trees were growing in St. Augustine - the earliest European Settlement in America.

The success of Columbus' voyages set off a series of westward explorations by European seafaring states. These states set out to exploit the New World's riches, build trade networks and colonies, and spread Christianity. The Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500, and the Spanish began arriving in the Americas shortly after - both bringing oranges with them.

Meanwhile, back in the Old World, Portuguese maritime explorers were about to discover an even more favourable variety of the orange. In 1485, the first Portuguese sailor made his way around the southernmost point of South Africa and into the Indian Ocean. In 1497, a subsequent fleet lead by Vasco da Gama followed the same route to get to India, around the Cape and along the East African coast. The Portuguese were able to take control of several Asian port cities, including Goa in India. While the Portuguese were unsuccessful in taking control of the Indian Ocean trade, largely due to the fact that they had nothing to sell, they did bring an even more delicious variety of the sweet orange back to Europe. They were described in 1498 by Vasco da Gama as “very good oranges, much better than those from Portugal”. So overall, successful efforts! The voyage contributed to the spread and popularization of orange growing by introducing this superior variety. By 1646 sweet oranges were well known and commonly enjoyed around the Mediterranean.

Vasco da Gama's introduction of this sweeter orange was so monumental, that he has a crater on the moon named after him! It might be named after him for his long  list of life's accomplishments , but I'd like to attribute his greatest success to the oranges we enjoy today.

One of the largest difficulties European explorers like Columbus and Gama faced was scurvy. It is estimated that 2 million sailors died during the Age of Exploration from the disease.

Many animals and plants are able to synthesize vitamin C through a sequence of enzyme-driven steps that convert monosaccharides (simple sugars) to vitamin C. One of two major primate suborders, haplorrhini (including old world monkeys, apes, and humans), did not evolve with the ability to synthesize vitamin C. The first evidence that oranges could be used as a cure for scurvy came from Ms. Ebot Mitchell of England. She wrote a book in 1707 that surfaced in the attic of a Gloucestershire (England) home detailing over 100 household recipes, including the cure for scurvy: “Recp.t for the Scurvy” consisting of extracts of fresh vegetables with a “plentiful supply of orange juice mixed with white wine or beer”. In 1747, James Lind performed clinical tests on sailors to show that citrus was an effective means of preventing and curing scurvy: "the results of all my experiments was, that oranges and lemons were the most effectual remedies for this distemper at sea”. The formally recorded discovery for the vitamin C deficiency that once plagued explorers allowed for longer voyages, and a much larger number of sailors making it to their final destination.

It was through desire to spread Christianity and the search for gold that oranges made their way to and through California. Spanish missionaries brought orange trees to Arizona in 1707, and to San Diego in 1769. The first orange grove was planted at the San Gabriel Mission in 1804, the 4th of 21 Spanish missions to be established in California. The first commercial orchard was planted in 1840 near present day Los Angeles by William Wolfskill, the “granddaddy” of California’s citrus industry. When the 1849 gold rush hit, there was a huge demand for oranges – by this time it was well known that they prevented scurvy. This allowed Wolfskill’s small orchard to flourish. The first orange tree in Northern California was planted in 1856, next to a bar in Oroville. The tree is known as the “Mother Orange Tree”. Miners use to come to the bar and enjoy oranges, planting their orange seeds and growing more orange trees.

In the 1870s, the navel orange arrived. The navel orange is the result of a mutation from an orange tree in a Brazilian monastery in Bahia, thought to have happened between 1810 and 1820. The mutation left the fruit seedless and sterile. The only method to cultivate navel oranges was to graft cuttings onto other varieties of citrus trees. Twelve Bahia orange trees were sent to America, and Eliza Tibbets received two. The two trees she planted in Riverside California were very successful - the navel orange was far superior to other varieties at the time because it was seedless, sweet, and ripened in winter under California's Mediterranean climate. The popularity of navel orange rapidly spread to Florida, and other countries.  

As oranges were moving through the United States and being cultivated around Central and South America, oranges from the Mediterranean began to make their way into preserves for transportation further North. Marmalade became a British and French breakfast staple, and greenhouses called orangeries began to grace aristocratic estates allowing orange trees to be cultivated in cold climates and provide fresh fruit for the elite. By the time Eliza Tibbets’ navel orange trees had matured (early 1900s), transportation and technology were making it possible for oranges to be consumed on a global scale. Fresh oranges from California began being sent to Chicago and New York on refrigerated train cars. And by the end of WWI, advancing mechanical processing techniques converted oranges into easy-to-transport juice concentrate, which revolutionized Florida’s orange industry.

Today, over 75 million tonnes of oranges are produced globally over 4.5 billion hectares of land. Oranges are the world's most cultivated fruit tree, and yielded a $5.4 trillion (USD - so $7.5 trillion CAD) industry in 2018.

Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows that 124 of the worlds 196 countries produce oranges. Click a country on the map to find out how many tonnes of oranges it produced in 2018!