hazel-mary on 20 Feb 2003  •  Link

In seventeenth century England, as in Italy today, citrus trees were often grown in large pots which were kept outside in the summer and wheeled back indoors (into a heated orangery) to over winter, something they still do on a small scale at Chiswick House in London. There is an orangery - Dutch influenced - in the grounds of Ham House, and another, well documented, in Kew gardens, where it is currently being restored.

Susanna on 20 Feb 2003  •  Link

Oranges,

vincent on 7 May 2003  •  Link

"First Orange garden of England" and famous too. Reported by J. Evelyn sept.27 1658. It was Bedington (Nr. Cheme? & Bansted)the antient Seate of the Carews. --Interesting way of preventing frost burn -- "( being now over-growne trees, and planted in the ground, & secured in winter with Wooden Tabernacle & stoves:... the pomegranads beare here.... fully planted with Walnuts & Chery trees,which afford considerable rent:...." (profitable too. no gentleman farmer?

Pedro. on 12 Jun 2004  •  Link

Oranges, Mandarins, Tangerines, Sugar and Spice and all things nice

vicente on 13 Jun 2004  •  Link

a story of the Grape fruit and grapefruit. "some visitors to the States were offered grape_fruit, expecting fruit of the vine received Grape-fruit, Oh my! Sour Orange.

dirk on 15 Jun 2004  •  Link

transport of oranges

Interesting to know: to preserve the oranges during their transport by ship, they were usually packed in barrels filled with salt water. This lies at the origin of the salty taste of the "real" orange marmelade (containing the peel of the orange as well as the fruit).

San Diego Sarah on 30 Dec 2018  •  Link

"China oranges" -- In some Indo-European languages, the words for orange allude to the eastern origin of the fruit and can be translated literally as "apple from China".

The earliest mention of the sweet orange in Chinese literature dates from 314 B.C. ... Citrus fruits — among them the bitter orange — were introduced to Sicily in the 9th century during the period of the Emirate of Sicily.

The sweet orange was unknown until the late 15th century or the beginnings of the 16th century, when Italian and Portuguese merchants brought orange trees into the Mediterranean area. Shortly afterward, the sweet orange quickly was adopted as an edible fruit. It also was considered a luxury item and wealthy people grew oranges in private conservatories, called orangeries.

By 1646, the sweet orange was well known throughout Europe.

Louis XIV of France had a great love of orange trees, and built the grandest of all royal Orangeries at the Palace of Versailles. At Versailles potted orange trees in solid silver tubs were placed throughout the rooms of the palace, while the Orangerie allowed year-round cultivation of the fruit to supply the court. When Louis condemned his finance minister, Nicolas Fouquet, in 1664, part of the treasures which he confiscated were over 1,000 orange trees from Fouquet's estate at Vaux-le-Vicomte.

For more, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ora…

San Diego Sarah on 6 Jun 2021  •  Link

Good to know the old ways are still being maintained by Chiswick House:

'In April about St. George his day, you shall set abroad your citron and orange trees, as also such other trees as you had kept within house from St. Martin's Day.' -- Richard Surflet, 1600

November 11 is St. Martin's Day

San Diego Sarah on 29 Dec 2024  •  Link

All citrus fruits, can trace their roots to the southeast foothills of the Himalayas. According to DNA evidence, the first citrus trees appeared in there about 8,000,000 years ago; then they spread across the Indian subcontinent to south-central China.

These ancient citrus fruits were nothing like the oranges we know. They were smaller, often bitter, in a variety of shapes and colors, from knobby, yellow fruits (like modern citrons) to large, green, smooth-skinned citruses (like modern pomelos).
All our oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruits are descendants of ancient species, namely citrons, pomelos, and mandarins, native to South Asia and East Asia.
Today's sweet orange, which accounts for about 70% of global orange production, is a cultivated hybrid of the ancient pomelo — a large, pale green or yellow fruit with a thick rind — and ancient mandarins, which were about the size of olives.

Modern oranges are the result of extensive selective breeding over thousands of years. Early oranges were peobably smaller, with a looser, bumpier skin. They could have been bitter or sweet — the first known reference to what are now called sweet oranges comes from Chinese literature c. 314 BCE.

As for the color, early oranges had shades ranging from pale yellow to green. Today, many oranges remain green when ripe, particularly in warmer parts of the world, since the color of an orange is related to temperature and environment, not ripeness. Oranges turn orange due to exposure to cold, and some oranges grown in warmer climes are picked green and treated with ethylene gas to make them more orange.

By the 11th century, oranges were growing in Southern Europe, although they had a bitter flavor and were used primarily as medicine. Sweet oranges, similar to what we eat, did not appear in Europe until the 16th century.
There followed a time of breeding programs and intensive cultivation that shaped the orange into a fruit resembling the modern variety. Oranges would have been smaller, odd sized, with a variety of shades, but they would have been recognizable to us.

Evidence for this is in paintings from the 16th century onward — e.g., Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s “Winter” (part of the “Four Seasons” set, 1563); Willem Kalf’s “Wineglass and a Bowl of Fruit” (1663); and Luis Melendez’s “Still Life with Lemons and Oranges” (circa 1760).

The word “orange” referred to a fruit first and a color later. The word comes from the Old French word for the citrus fruit, pomme d’orenge, which is thought to have come from the Sanskrit word nāranga via the Persian and Arabic languages (hence the Spanish word for orange, naranja).
The use of orange as the description for a color started to appear in English in the 1500s — many centuries after humans started eating real oranges.

Excerpted from
https://historyfacts.com/science-…