352 CALIFORNIA FRUITS : HOW TO GROW THEM 



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distance is safely traverses, but the grape rules not as fruit, but through 

 its manufactured products, while the orange carries its natural beauty, 

 fragrance and flavor unchanged around the world. From the earliest 

 times the orange has not only been accepted in northern climes as a 

 symbol of tropical and sub-tropical salubrity and sumptuousness, but 

 by its own distinctive characteristics as a fruit it has won recognition 

 as befitting the highest uses of mankind. By its nature too the orange 

 ministers to its own commercial popularity. It endures long shipment ; 

 it ripens slowly and through a season of several months which constitute 

 the winter in northern latitudes when local fruits are scant or absent 

 and the refreshment in the citric juices most welcome. The production 

 of such a commercial commodity has from the earliest times constituted 

 an important industry. 



It is a significant fact that though the orange thrives in the tropics 

 it does not resent the slight touch of frost which characterizes semi- 

 tropical situations. It is also significant that the fruit grown in semi- 

 tropical countries, especially those which have a more or less distinctly 

 marked two-season climate, differs in character from the strictly 

 tropical orange and is firmer, heavier, more sprightly in flavor and with 

 much better keeping and carrying qualities. The tropical orange has 

 but small commercial importance ; the semi-tropical orange rules in the 

 markets of the world. That the semi-tropical orange should have this 

 distinctive character is most fortunate, for it ministers directly to the 

 will for industry which is superior in semi-tropical countries. By the 

 seven degrees of frost which the orange tree will endure without injury, 

 it has^gained the seventy degrees of north latitude through which its 

 fruit freely seeks a market. Because, though the tropical orange 

 would reach most distant markets in small quantities, it could never 

 attain the commercial supremacy which the fruit now enjoys. 



The sweet orange is a native of eastern Asia and was carried thence 

 to India and to Asia Minor. It possibly reached Portugal from India 

 through the early Portuguese navigators. Thus the distribution of the 

 fruit was westward. The history of modern commercial orange grow- 

 ing consists of a series of progressive movements always trending 

 westward and gaining in volume the .newer centers of production 

 outstripping the older and ultimately largely displacing their product 

 from the greatest markets of the upper divisions of the temperate zone. 

 When the Moors introduced orange growing into Algeria and Spain 

 they displaced the traffic from Asia Minor and gave the Mediterranean 

 region for several hundred years undisputed possession of the markets 

 of the north of Europe and possession also of the American demand 

 when that arose. When the Spaniards and Portuguese carried the 

 orange to the West Indies and to Florida they laid the foundation for 

 an industry which American enterprise developed in Florida until that 

 district not only contended with the Mediterranean region for American 

 markets, but was planning to invade northern Europe by direct ship- 

 loads when the demonstration came that the climate of northern Florida 

 and of the Gulf coast westward was too treacherous for commercial 

 ventures in orange growing at least with the then popular varieties 

 and methods of propagation. But as the Florida supply failed through 



