1156 



ORANGE 



As tires sweep over the pine lands aunually, burning 

 the resinous pine straw, there is a good deal of finely 

 divided charcoal in these soils but very little humus, 

 while in hammock soil the percentage of humus is often 

 very large. 



Platwoods {low pine land) is characterized by several 

 small-coned species of pine, which otherwise very much 



1557. Florida Oranee erove. 



resemble the long-leaved pines. This land is often un- 

 derlaid with hardpan a foot or two below the surface. 

 Much of it is subject to overflow in the rainy months, 

 and when overgrown with gallberry bushes it is useless 

 for Orange culture. 



A prairie is a tract in the flatwoods overgrown with 

 grass only and covered by standing water during a 

 part of each year. 



A scrub is a tract of white sand — often like clean 

 granulated sugar — overgrown with dwarfed live-oaks 

 and other bushes, mostly of the heath family and usu- 

 ally only a few feet high, with scattered spruce-pine 

 trees, the open spaces often covered with reindeer 

 moss and allied lichens. It is entirely worthless for 

 Orange culture, though suited for pineapples if richly 

 and constantly fertilized. 



A bay or bayhead is a deep accumulation of humus — 

 muck and peat. When drained, such lands make the 

 best vegetable gardens. 



The shell-mounds are, as their name implies, accumu- 

 lations of the shells of marine or fresh-water mollusks, 

 intermixed with a little sand and humus. They are apt 

 to be thirsty, though fertile when plenty of water is 

 supplied, and although the Orange will grow upon them 

 and produce fine, silky-skinned fruit, the trees are not 

 long-lived, as a rule, and seem subject to disease. The 

 finest silky-skinned fruit is rarely, if over, produced by 

 trees in vigorous health and ru^^^^t-d growth. 



The tendency of Orange trees im ]"iin' liiiid, especially 

 bottomless pine lauds— those not uiulerlaiil with clay — 

 is to wood growth, and the postponement of abundant 

 fruiting till a great age has been reached; this is es- 

 pecially the case with seedling trees. The coarser the 

 pine land soil in texture, the longer, as a rule, will the 

 Orange tree take to reach a bearing age, sometimes 

 requiring twenty or thirty years, even with abundant 

 fertilizing, on the coarser sands. On the hammocks, 

 seedlings fruit at a much earlier age, and budded trees 

 often dwarf themselves from overbearing. 



South of the 27th degree of latitude there are some 

 rich, red, loamy soils, while the sand consists largely of 

 coral debris instead of quartz. In these southern re- 

 gions the Orange is supposed to flourish only upon the 

 scrub lands, being dwarfed and subject to disease on 

 the otherwise rich and fertile red soils. 



When not injured by frost, the Florida Orange tree is 

 immensely productive of thin-skinned delicious fruits. 

 A good Florida orchard or grove is shown in Fig. 

 1557. A new tree arising from the stump of a frozen 

 tree is shown in Fig. II^SS. Many groves have been re- 

 newed in this way. 



I'arieties. — Of the leading varieties, Homosassa 

 may be taken as the type of the finest seedlings origi- 

 nating in Florida; other Florida seedlings have been 



ORANGE 



named, but they are much alike. Jaffa and Majorca 

 are typical of the best thornless foreign varieties; the 

 Washington is the only navel Orange sufficiently pro- ■ 

 ductive to warrant planting in Florida, where none of 

 the navel Oranges are as prolific as other .sorts. Of the 

 kid glove Orange, the Tangerine has quite displaced 

 the Mandarin in Florida, the brighter color of the for- 

 mer always ensuring a higher market price. 8atsuma 

 has the merit of being earlier than the Tangerine and 

 possibly being hardier, hence is largely planted, though 

 not equal in appearance or quality to the Dancy Tan- 

 gerine. Of the two varieties of Kumquat or Cherry 

 Orange, the "oblong" is the best market fruit, the 

 "round" being too variable in size and often too small. 

 Theodore L. Mead. 

 Another View op Orange Culture in Florida.— 

 In primitive Orange culture the tree was a seedling 

 from selected fruit, and even at this time the majority 

 of hearing trees in Florida are seedlings. Seedlings 

 an- late in coming into bearing, their fruit is of variable 

 <|uality, and the roots of sweet Orange trees are likely 

 to get the "foot-rot," or mal-di-goma. Therefore grow- 

 ers are now more careful as to stocks used and seldom 

 plant the sweet seedling tree, but graft or bud on more 

 suitable roots. On very high land of best quality which 

 is deeply drained, it is possible to raise the sweet seed- 

 ling without great danger from foot-rot. As long as 

 the roots are healthy the trees produce fruit in abun- 

 dance, and many growers contend that the fruit pro- 

 duced, whether of Orange, lemon or pomelo, on sweet 

 Orange stocks is better in quality of juice, has less 

 "rag" and a thinuer skin, and hangs on the tree in per- 

 fection longer than when grown on other roots. 



The sour Orange as a stock for other citrous trees is 

 a contestant with the longer grown sweet Orange, and 

 as it is free from gum disease, commonly called "foot- 

 rot," and yields abundant crops, it is planted on soils 

 which naturally siiit it ; these are low, rich lands of 

 both pine and hammock. In the central part of Florida 

 it has run wild, and grows in the open hammock woods 

 wliere some years ago the best thickets were budded or 

 grafted to the sweet Orange, and up to 1895 bore enor- 

 mous crops of fruit. The sour Orange does not do so 

 well on higher land, though sometimes planted there, 

 and will not grow at all in dry, coarse sand, where the 

 "rough lemon" manages to exist and produce fruit. 



This "rough lemon" seems to be a natural hybrid 

 citrus, with leaves and flowers somewhat resembling 

 the commercial lemon and with large, round, coarse 



¥/ 





1558. Sprout-grown Oianee tree. 



fruit with a lemon's acidity, but with the appearance of 

 a coarse sour Orange. 



For quickness of growth and prolific fruiting, no 

 citrous tree compares with the "rough lemon " as a stock 

 for Oranges, lemons, etc., and growers are more suc- 

 cessful with it than with any other stock on diverse 

 soils so far tried. 



