No. 4. 



The Golden-fruited Orange Tree. 



129 



Parkinson, in his " Practise of Plants," 

 publislied in 1629, gives some curious direc- 

 tions for the preservation of orange trees, 

 from which, one would be led to infer that 

 the trees at Beddington, with their ample 

 protection of a movable covering in winter, 

 had not been in existence at that time. 

 " The orange tree," says he, " hath abiden, 

 with some extraordinary branching and bud- 

 ding of it, when as neither citron nor lemon 

 trees would, by any means, be preserved for 

 any long time. Some keepe them in square 

 boxes, and lift them to and fro by iron hooks 

 on the sides, or cause them to be rolled on 

 trundles or small wheels under them, to 

 place them in an house, or close galerie, for 

 the winter time ; others plant them against 

 a bricke wall in the ground, and defend 

 them by a shed of boardes, covered with 

 seare-cloth, in the winter; and by the 

 warmth of a stove, or such other thing, 

 give them some comfort in the colder times; 

 but no tent or mean provision will preserve 

 them." 



Towards the end of the XVIIth and in 

 the early part of the XVIIIth centuries, the 

 orange tree was a very fashionable article 

 of growth in conservatories, in France, as 

 well as in Britain. The plants were mostly 

 procured from Genoa, with stems generally 

 from four to six feet in height ; they were 

 planted in large boxes, and were set out 

 during summer, to decorate the walks near 

 the houses, in the manner still practised at 

 Versailles, the Tuileries, and some other 

 collections in Europe and in America. 



The largest trees in Britain are said to be 

 those at Smorgony, in Glamorganshire; they 

 are planted in the floor of an immense con- 

 servatory, and produce fruit in abundance. 

 It is said that these plants weje procured 

 from a wreck on the coast in that quarter, 

 in the time of Henry VII. 



In the south of Devonshire, and particu- 

 larly at Saltcombe, one of the warmest spots 

 in England, it is said there are gardens con- 

 taining orange trees which have withstood 

 upwards of one hundred winters in the 

 open air. The fruit is represented as being 

 as large and fine as any from Portugal.. 



In East Florida, the orange grows spon- 

 taneously in the neighbourhood of New 

 Smyrna. In noticing that town, in 1791, 

 Bartram observes, " I was there about ten 

 years ago, when the surveyor ran the lines 

 of the colony, where there was neither hab- 

 itation nor cleared field. It was then a fa- 

 mous orange grove, the upper or south prom- 

 ontory of a ridge nearly half a mile wide, 

 and stretching north about forty miles. All 

 this was one entire orange grove, with live 

 oaks, magnolias, palms, red bays, and others." 



He also makes frequent mention of exten- 

 sive groves of wild oranges in Florida, aa 

 far north as latitude twenty-eight degrees. 

 Dr. Baldwin, in 1817, in speaking of Fish's 

 Island, says, " Here are the remains of per- 

 haps the most celebrated orange grove in 

 the world. Some trees still remain that 

 are thirty feet in height, and still retain a 

 portion of their golden fruit." In the same 

 year, in describing the beauties of the St. 

 John's, he says, " You may eat oranges 

 from morning till night, at every plantation 

 along the shores, while the loild trees, bend- 

 ing with their golden fruit over the water, 

 present an enchanting appearance." These 

 trees are not regarded as originally natives 

 of the new world, but were introduced by 

 the Spaniards, at the time they settled Flo- 

 rida, or by a colony of Greeks and Minor- 

 cans, who founded New Smyrna, in 1769, 

 while that country was in the possession of 

 the Engli.-^h. Audubon, as late as 1832, ob- 

 serves, "Whatever its original country may 

 be supposed to be, the wild orange is, to all 

 appearances, indigenous in many parts of 

 Florida, not only in the neighbourhood of 

 plantations, but in the wildest portions of 

 that wild country, where there exist groves 

 fully a mile in extent." This wild fruit is 

 known in Florida by the name of the bitter- 

 sweet orange, which does not differ mate- 

 rially from the Seville orange, and probably 

 originated from that variety. The occur- 

 rence of these trees, wherever they grow, 

 is a sure indication of good land. 



For many years past, no small degree of 

 attention has been paid to the culture of the 

 common edible orange, at St. Augustine, 

 and on the river St. John's. The number 

 of trees owned by different individuals, prior 

 to 1835, varied from ten to fifteen hundred. 

 Perhaps no person in Florida had more than 

 the latter number in full bearing condition 

 at the time of the great frost, which oc- 

 curred. on the 9th of February, of that year. 

 There were many trees then to be found in 

 St. Augustine, which exceeded forty feet in 

 height, with trunks from twenty to twenty- 

 seven inches in diameter, and which, proba- 

 bly, were more than a century old. But 

 there are many persons in that vicinity, at 

 the present time, who are extensively en- 

 gaged in the business. The late Mr. Kings- 

 ley left upwards of six thousand bearing 

 trees, in 1843, all of which are on the Sl 

 John's. In addition to these, there are also 

 on the same river more than one hundred 

 orange groves, which, it is estimated, contain 

 twenty thousand trees. At St. Augustine, 

 it is said, there are at least thirty thousand 

 standard trees, four thousand of which are 

 owned by Mr. J. Douglass; about the same 



