14 November: Oranges

It's Orange Day in the French Revolutionary Calendar. 10 things you might not know about oranges.

1. The colour Orange was named for the fruit, not the other way round. The word orange comes from the sanskrit word naranga, which comes from the Tamil word naru, meaning “fragrant.” The first recorded use of orange as a colour in English was in 1512. In other European languages, the origin of the name is different. In Romanian and Greek, the fruit was named for the Portuguese traders which introduced them, and in German the word is Apfelsine, which literally translates as "Apple from China".
2. There is no such thing as a wild orange. They are only found where cultivated by people.
3. An orange is actually a hybrid of a pomelo and a mandarin. We know this because scientists have sequenced the genome of the sweet orange. They found that about 25% of its genes come from the pomelo and about 75% from the mandarin.
4. They were first cultivated in China around 2500 BC and were first mentioned in Chinese literature in 314 BC.
5. The Moors introduced the orange to Europe, specifically in modern Andalucia, Spain, with large scale cultivation starting in the 10th century. Spanish travellers went on to introduce the orange to America. Spanish missionaries are said to have introduced the fruit to Arizona and California, while Christopher Columbus himself is thought to have planted the fruit in Hispaniola.
6. Ripe oranges aren't always orange. They can be Green, or have patches of green on them and still be ripe and perfectly okay to eat. One place you won't find a green orange is in shops in Texas, Arizona, California and Florida, where it is illegal to harvest immature fruit. There, a ripe orange with some green on it will be exposed to ethylene gas to turn all the skin orange. If left on the tree, an orange will turn from green to orange and back to green again as the temperature fluctuates and still be perfectly edible.
7. The biggest producer of oranges (and orange juice) in the world is Brazil. Brazil produces more than the next three largest producers (USA, China and India) put together. Orange trees are the most cultivated fruit tree in the world.
8. Oranges are one of the best sources of Vitamin C, and as they don't spoil easily, were great for stopping sailors getting scurvy. Citrus trees were planted along trade routes by Spanish and Dutch traders. The peel is also rich in vitamin C.
9. Florida celebrates the orange by having orange blossom as its state flower, the orange as its state fruit and orange juice as its state beverage. While on the subject of America, there is a wacky law in California which states that it's illegal to eat an orange in the bath!
10. Commercially grown oranges are propagated by grafting. It is possible to grow them from seeds, but the new plant may produce fruit that is different from the parent plant or may not produce fruit at all.