THE ORANGE. 



(Citrus aurantium.) 



The tree which produces the well- exception of the southeastern portion, 



known Orange of commerce is closely climatic conditions would not have per- 



related to the lemon, the citron and the mitted the growth of the Orange, 



lime, and with them belongs to the genus De Candolle, an eminent botanist and 



Citrus. one the truthfulness of whose investiga- 



By some it is supposed that Linnaeus tions cannot be questioned, held that the 



selected this name, deriving it from a original home of the Orange was the 



corruption of the Greek word meaning Burmese peninsula and southern China, 



cedar-tree, because, like the cedar, it is an Throughout both China and Japan this 



evergreen. By others it is* held that the fruit has been cultivated from very an- 



name was chosen in honor of the city of dent times. 



Citron in Judea. In ordinary language Though not found by the Romans in 



the name citron is applied to another spe- India it was later cultivated there and 



cies of the genus, the fruit of which is ob- without doubt it was carried from there 



long, about six inches in length and with by the Arabs to southwestern Asia pre- 



a thick rind. vious to the ninth century and from there 



Many consider that the name Orange into Africa and to some of the European 



is a direct corruption of the Latin word islands. The Arabian physicians were 



aureum, meaning golden; but our best familiar with the medicinal virtues of the 



authorities on the derivation of words Orange and have spoken of it in their 



believe that the name, though a corrup- writings. It was probably afterwards in- 



tion, reached its present form in the fol- troduced into Spain and possibly to other 



lowing manner : "The Sanskrit designa- portions of southern Europe by the same 



tion nagrungo, becoming narungle in agency as it seemed to follow the spread 



Hindustani, and corrupted by the Arabs of Mohammedan conquest and civiliza- 



into naranj (Spanish naranja), passed by tion. Thus in the twelfth century we find 



easy transitions into the Italian arancia that the bitter Orange was a commonly 



(Latinized aurantium), the Roman aran- cultivated tree in all the Levant coun- 



gi, and the later Provincial Orange." tries. There is no reference to the sweet 



In regard to the original home of the Orange in the literature of this time and 

 Orange there is a great diversity of opin- it must have been introduced at a later 

 ion, yet there is little doubt that it was in period. It was certainly cultivated in 

 some portion of southern Asia. Both Italy as early as the sixteenth century, 

 the Orange and the lemon were unknown In more recent years the cultivation of 

 to the Roman's, hence they must have the various varieties has spread through- 

 been indigenous in a country not visited out the world wherever the climate and 

 by this people. The region traversed the conditions of the soil will permit the 

 by them was great and they even pene- ripening of the fruit, 

 trated India. They were a people who Risso, in his valuable history of the 

 were inclined to please the palate and Orange family, enumerates one hundred 

 would surely have used the Orange and and sixty-nine varieties with distinct 

 taken it home with them if discovered and characteristics. Of these he classes for- 

 would doubtless have recorded the find- ty-three under the Citrus aurantium. 

 ing of so important a fruit. These facts Besides the sweet and bitter varieties 

 tend to prove that the Orange was not the more common ones are the Mandarin 

 then cultivated in India unless in the re- Orange of China, a flat and spheroidal 

 moter parts. Other portions of Asia were fruit the rind of which easily separates 

 unknown to the Romans but, with the from the pulp; the Tangerine, which is 



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