AN HISTORIC ORANGE TREE 



BiaiikLv T. Galloway 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 



TREES arc like folks. Some come 

 into the world great, some achieve 

 greatness, and some have great- 

 ness thrust upon them. 



In one of the greenhouses of the U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture at Wash- 

 ington is an old orange tree whose life 

 has been an eventful one, and even now 

 after nearly fifty years its days of 

 romance are not over. Verily, it has 

 achieved greatness. Surrounding the 

 Patriarch and serving as a guard of 

 honor, so to speak, is probably one of 

 the most unique collections of citrus 

 and citrus relatives to be found any- 

 where in the world. Dr. Walter T. 

 Swingle has been bringing these citrus 

 plants together for study in connec- 

 tion with his orange breeding and 

 related work. The old patriarch has 

 plenty of company and plenty of rela- 

 tives, and it is altogether fitting that 

 it should spend its last days surrounded 

 by so many of its kindred. 



The old tree is one of the two sur- 

 vivors, so far as known, of the earliest 

 propagated stock from ten or twelve 

 small plants of the navel orange 

 introduced from Bahia, Brazil, by the 

 late William Saunders, for many years 

 Superintendent of the Gardens and 

 Grounds, U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture. The other tree is located at 

 Riverside, California. It was about 

 the year 1867 that Mr. Saunders con- 

 structed an orange house on the De- 

 partment grounds, near where the large 

 marble building occupied by the Bu- 

 reau of Plant Industry now stands. He 

 began assembling oranges from differ- 

 ent parts of the world and many of 

 them were planted and fruited out in 

 this house. Thus, as early as 1871, 

 Mr. Saunders, in his report to the 

 Commissioner of Agriculture, stated 

 that efforts had been made to secure 



complete collections of citrus. He 

 further stated that the collection 

 numbered about fifty kinds, but that 

 propagation and distribution had been 

 confined almost solely to the Maltese 

 Oval, the true Saint Michael, and the 

 Tangerine. In none of the published 

 official reports made by Mr. Saunders 

 to the Commissioner of Agriculture 

 does he mention the navel orange so 

 that documentary records of its intro- 

 duction, propagation, and distribution 

 are lacking. 



We have known the tree growing in 

 the Department greenhouse for thirty- 

 five years, and it is not much larger now 

 than when we first saw it in the old 

 orange house in 1887. For many 

 years it was our understanding that 

 this tree was one of the original ten or 

 twelve that were shipped to Mr. 

 Saunders from Bahia, Brazil, about 

 1870. Dr. William A. Taylor, Chief of 

 the Bureau of Plant Industry, is 

 authority for the statement that Mr. 

 Saunders told him in 1891 that the 

 tree was budded from one of the 

 original introductions. What became 

 of the ten or twelve imported trees is 

 not definitely known. Mr. Saunders 

 in his notes made in 1898 or later, 

 published by Dorsett, Shamel, and 

 Popenoe^ in 1917, says that all were 

 fruited in Washington. Presumably all 

 of the original trees were held in 

 Washington for a considerable time, 

 for Mr. Saunders in speaking of their 

 arrival says that he had a supply of 

 young stocks on hand and that as fast 

 as he could secure buds they were 

 worked on the stocks. 



The first two young plants sent out, 

 according to Mr. Saunders, were for- 

 warded to Mrs. Eliza Tibbets of River- 

 side, California. These trees have 

 become historic, and only recently a 



^ U. S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin, No. 445. 1917. 



163 



