54 



STATE BOARD OF HORTICULTURE. 



indebted for assistance. Although no description of the Navel 

 orange appears in the text, this is the earliest reference known. 

 M. George Gallesio, Auditor of the State Council and Sub- 

 Prefect of Savona, in a treatise on the citrus family, written 

 early in this century, makes mention of a variety of orange, 

 double flowered. The author describes the Aurantium fceti- 

 ferum as presenting a superfostation, an imperfect development 

 of many germs inclosed within another or united under the 

 envelope or an exterior germ. Those descriptions undoubtedly 



refer to the Navel orange- 

 - ' — — — ■ ■• "^" "" Thus it would seem that the 



navel formation is of great 

 antiquity. The navel mark 

 shows in the fruit as early as 

 it can be examined, which in 

 its development the navel is 

 itself a secondary orange, in 

 some specimens having a dis- 

 tinct skin surrounding it. 



History of the Introduction nf 

 This King of Citrus Fruits. — 

 *" During the Civil War a 

 woman who had been sojourn- 

 ing in Brazil told Mr. Saunders 

 that she knew of an orange at 

 Bahia, Brazil, that excelled 

 any other variety she had ever 

 tasted or heard of. He sent 

 there and had twelve trees 

 propagated by budding and 

 sent to him, in 1870. They all grew, and some of them are 

 yet bearing fruit in the orange house at Washington. None of 

 the original trees was sent out to the public, but all were there 

 used as stock from which to propagate by budding. Many young 

 trees were budded from them and sent to Florida and California. 

 Early in 1873 Mrs. Tibbets was in Washington, just previous to 

 going to her new home at Riverside, California. Mr. Saunders 

 offered to give her some trees of this new and untried orange and 

 she most gladly accepted two trees. She and her aged husband 

 planted them beside their cottage, and when they bore fruit it was 



* Prof. H. E. Van Deman, in '■ Rural New Yorker," June, 1899. 



Mr. Wm. Saurders, of Washington, D. C, 

 to whom the world is indebted for the in- 

 troduction of the Washington Navel orange. 



