National Geographic Magazine/Volume 31/Number 6/Our State Flowers/The Orange Blossom

The Orange Blossom (Citrus sinensis Osbeck)


Who that has seen loved ones given in marriage, with the orange blossoms lending the touch of their beauty to the bride, can help but sympathize with the sentiments of Florida's legislators when they enacted into law the State's affection for the flower of its favorite fruit? And while the orange blossom is admired and honored by its association with the bridal hour, the fruit is known wherever men and women who love good things to eat foregather.

While the orange is not native to America, being in reality a comparatively recent immigrant, there are more orange trees in the United States than in any other part of the world. Fourteen million trees were growing in this country in 1909, two for every thirteen people. Of these, Florida had nearly three million, while most of the others were in California.

The orange appears to have originated in China and the Burmese Peninsula. Thence it was carried to India and Hindustan. There the Arabs met it, fancied it, and gave it a footing in Mesopotamia at the beginning of the tenth century. From Asia it was introduced into northern Africa and Spain, traveling with the conquering armies of Islam. It journeyed with the Spaniards from Europe to South America, where it was found by missionaries from this country, who sent some small trees to Florida and California. These took root, thrived, and straightway the American orange became one of our chief blessings.

In favorable seasons and in well-kept groves, trees bear from 400 to 1,000 oranges each. Being slow in reaching maturity, they are slow also in giving up their privilege of producing their golden fruit. Carefully tended trees usually yield for fifty years, and some are productive for eighty years. Occasionally a sturdy centenarian is found bearing fruit in abundance; but so great has been the improvement of the orange under modern methods of plant-breeding that the product of these hardy old trees seems bitter and unpalatable, although it may have delighted ten thousand feasters in its day.

Those who have not been privileged to visit an orangery and there taste the nature-ripened fruit in all its golden lusciousness cannot know fully how delicious an orange may be. The orange that goes to market and must wait weeks before it can get out of the hands of the retailer and into those of the consumer is packed before it is ripe, and few fruits gathered unripe can ever be as delicious as those which have hung on the spit of the twig and toasted to a proper flavor before the sun.

The orange tree is an evergreen, and cultivated varieties seldom exceed 30 feet in height. Blossoms, green oranges, and ripe fruit are often seen on the same tree, but usually the trees bloom in the spring and ripen their fruit in the fall. The oily, acrid peel of the orange is an effective means which Nature employs to seal up her packages of fruit. The germ or the insect that could break through a healthy orange skin would be a brave and persistent creature.

Source: —, ed. (June 1917), “Our State Flowers: The Floral Emblems Chosen by the Commonwealths”, The National Geographic Magazine 31(6): 490. (Illustration from page 504.)