CITRUS AURANTIUM. SWEET ORANGE. 
Class Eighteenth, POLYADELPHIA. — Order Third, ICOSANDRIA. 
Natural Order, AURANTIACE^. THE ORANGE TRIBE. 
The Orange tree is an evergreen, originally a native of the warmer parts of Asia, though it has been long 
naturalized in the south of Europe, as well as in the West India islands, and the tropical parts of America. 
The specific name is derived from aurum, gold, from the colour of the fruit. It is supposed by some to 
be also indigenous to the Canary islands or Hesperides, and its fruit to be the golden apples which the 
daughters of Hesperus caused to be so strictly guarded by a dragon : under this idea Yentenat changed 
the name of the natural order to which it belongs to Hesperideee, and hence, likewise, the fruit is called 
Hesperidium : 
“ Thus was this place, 
A happy rural seat of various view : 
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm ; 
Others whose fruit burnish’d with golden rind, 
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, 
If true, here only, and of delicious taste : — Milton. 
The orange is supposed to have been introduced into Italy not earlier than the fourteenth century, above 
a thousand years after the citron. Parkinson, writing in the beginning of the seventeenth century, says, 
The orange hath abiden with some extraordinary looking and tending, when neither citron nor lemon 
trees could be preserved any length of time.” The orange trees he alludes to, were those of Beddington, 
in Surrey, introduced from Italy by a knight of the noble family of the Carews, and the first that were 
brought into England; they were planted in the open ground and placed under a moveable cover in the 
winter months. Sir Francis Carew is the knight above referred to, who introduced orange trees into Eng- 
land, in the reign of Elizabeth, but whether he imported plants, or raised them from seeds brought home 
by Sir Walter Raleigh, has not been satisfactorily ascertained. These were very fine trees, fourteen feet 
high, the girt of the stem twenty nine inches, and the spreading of the branches one way nine feet, and 
twelve feet another. Evelyn informs us that they were neglected in his time during the minority of their 
then owner; they were killed by the great frost of 1739 — 10; they were planted before 1595. 
In this country the orange is chiefly prized as a green-house plant, and there are some splendid 
specimens in the conservatories at Nuneham Courtenay, in Oxfordshire, at Smorgony, in Glamorganshire, 
at the Wilderness in Kent, and at other places. “ In the south of Devonshire, and particularly at Sal- 
combe, one of the warmest spots in England, Loudon says, there may be seen in a few gardens, orange 
trees that have withstood our winters in the open air for upwards of a hundred years ; the fruit is as large 
and fine as any in Portugal. Trees raised from seed and inoculated on the spot, are found to bear the 
cold better than those which are imported. In our hot houses the trees produce their pure white and 
very fragrant flowers in June, and after the first season of flowering, blossoms and fruit appear together 
on the same plant, the latter remaining a year, or fifteen months, on the tree before it becomes ripe;” As 
a desert fruit the orange is well known. The varieties most esteemed are the China, Portugal, and Maltese. 
The fruit is also used in confectionary, both ripe and when green and not larger than a pea; it forms 
various liquors and conserves, either alone or with sugars, wines, or spirits. In cooking it is used to per- 
fume a number of dishes. It is used to form various perfumes and pomades, and the flowers distilled 
produce orange water, used in cooking, medicine, and as a perfume ; but the chief use of the sweet orange 
is for desert. There are nineteen varieties of the orange enumerated by Risso. All the species of Citrus 
may be propagated by seeds, cuttings, layers, by grafting, and budding. The object of raising plants from 
seed is stock for grafting or budding, or for new varieties. Pruning orange trees in England does not differ 
from that given to other greenhouse plants, and the consequence is handsome bushes or trees. But when 
orange trees are cultivated for the sake of their fruit, the branches ought to be kept thin, so as to admit of 
sun and air. The blossoms of most of the Citrus kind are produced in the form of terminating peduncles 
