Hello there. Welcome back for more citrus talk. What? You’ve heard enough? Hey, I got to visit the UC Riverside’s groves, and I’ve got a blog to write, so I’m going to juice it for all it’s worth. 
In Riverside, located at the corner of Magnolia at Arlington Avenue, is a Parent Washington Navel Orange Tree. This tree is a State of California historic landmark No.22. This historic tree is one of two plants originally given to Eliza Tibbets by William Saunders, a horticulturist at the Department of Agriculture in 1873. Eventually, ownership reverted to the city of Riverside and it was transplanted to this location in 1902. With help from a horticultural technique called ‘inarching’, Riverside’s Parent Navel Orange Tree has since been re-vivified (definition!) with new roots and still bears fruit! The tree sits on this street corner, surrounded by a wrought iron fence, with thousands of cars passing by it every day.
Here’s the background:
In 1820, in a monastery garden in Bahia, Brazil, a hybrid of the Sweet Orange known as the Bahia Navel Orange was born. Brazil sent a dozen of these trees to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington D.C. in 1870.
Mrs. Eliza Tibbetts of Riverside, CA wrote to the U.S.D.A. in 1873 asking for two of the new Navel oranges, never knowing that she would revolutionize the commercial Orange industry in California.
This new mutant bud stock called the Bahia Navel, was renamed the Riverside Navel, and then renamed again the Washington Navel after George Washington for a more national appeal. All new varieties of Navel Oranges can trace their roots back to the Washington Navel.
The second of the original two trees was acquired by Frank A. Miller, founder of the famed Mission Inn. With the hands-on assistance of President Teddy Roosevelt, Miller transplanted it to the inn’s courtyard on May 8, 1903. That tree died in 1921 and was eventually replaced by an 11 year-old descendant.
California Navel Oranges are seedless and larger than the Sweet Orange. Its thick, bright orange skin is easy to peel and protects it for shipping. The sweet, full-bodied sections make it an excellent eating orange.
You cannot reproduce these orange trees by seed. Although a seed will grow, it will appear bush-like and dangerously thorny. This is known as a “Wild Sucker”. Oranges are typically grafted from a parent rootstock, and can generally be purchased at nurseries.
Additionally, I learned on the citrus tour that the Pink Lemonade tree is also a clone, all trees originally cultivated from a mutant branch of a Eureka lemon tree. I have one in my front yard, so from now on, I’ll look at my little tree with a more discerning eye. In fact, here’s a picture of my harvest from my Meyer and Pink Lemonade trees, plus the citron I got in Riverside for a little contrast.
Here are a few websites to peruse:
http://users.kymp.net/citruspages/home.html
www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu
www.sdfarmbureau.org
Asian Citrus Psyllid
Mediterranean Fruit Fly
Tagged as:
Citrus
Yesterday I had the privilege to go on a tour of the UC Riverside citrus cooperative with the San Diego Master Gardeners.
Our group tour was led by retired professor and citrus expert from U.C. Riverside, Ottillia Bier aka “Toots”. This lady knows her citrus, says she eats a ton of it, and claims to have never had to take an antacid. I think her other nickname might be “Iron Gut” but that’s just an assumption on my part.
Anyhoo…..the University of California Riverside Citrus Variety Collection has a citrus collection consisting of two trees each of more than 1000 different citrus types. We wandered through a huge orchard looking at, picking, slicing, chewing, juicing, spitting and throwing citrus pieces all over the place including: orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, tangerine, navel, valencia, tangelo, pummelo, mandarin, moro, tarocco, jaffa, sanguinelli, calamondin, kumquat, bearss, satsuma, citron, dancy, nordmann, algerian, pink lemonade, delfino, ruby, eureka, oroblanco, cara cara, imperial, baygold, lisbon, nagami, marumi, clementine, valentine, marrakech, skaggs, variegated…..well, the list goes on and on. It was great! Everytime I thought I had tasted my new favorite, we’d move on to another tree and then I’d think THAT was the best.
One thing I was really curious to see was a citron tree. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get to that field so I was disappointed not to see the fruit on the tree, but “Toots” had one citron fruit that she brought with her for show and tell, so I was able to bring that home with me. I have found these at the Farmers’ Market in the past and they are so fragrant when you bring them in the house.
We were allowed to pick as much fruit as we wanted to bring home, so I had my bags at the ready and I collected a nice selection. I learned early on to pick only from the trees that “Toots” pointed out because a lot of fruit in the orchard looked ready to eat, but it only took one sour one (I ate an orange that was a 9 on a pucker factor scale of 1 to 10 – it took a minute to recover from that one!) to learn that lesson. Over all, some of my favorites were the seedless Kishu tangerine, the Cocktail which was a combo of a pummelo and a mandarin, and the Tarocco blood orange.
It was a fun, interesting and delicious day. And I was glad I remembered to pack my Tums!
CITRUS TOUR AT RIVERSIDE(Run your mouse over the picture to push the play button)
Tagged as:
Citrus,
master gardener
I’ve got six young, dwarf citrus growing around the property and, according to a Master Gardener I spoke with a few months back, I couldn’t have picked a worse time to plant citrus trees. New pests are cropping up constantly, so by the time the professionals figure out how to deal with one problem, another one crops up and presents a whole new set of issues.
My little Meyer lemon is the happiest of all my citrus right now and will give us a good crop considering its small size, but it’s not without its own setbacks.
First problem is the leaf miner problem affecting the new growth. I need to do some studying up on this, but I think I will just let it sit until I have harvested the fruit and then crop the plant to shape in the spring. I don’t want to encourage new growth right now so I’ll hold off on pruning.
Next is the chomping that is happening to the leaves. I think it is grasshoppers because I have found them on other plants in the garden and they seem to munch around the edges of the leaves.
Despite all these little obstacles, my little lemon tree is producing fruit in abundance and doesn’t seem to be faring too badly.
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butterflies,
caterpillars,
Citrus,
Meyers lemon
This isn’t breaking news, but it is a big factor if you are interested in growing citrus. When I bought some citrus trees a few months back, they all had a blue band on their branches showing they had been systemically treated and were not to be removed from the country until further notice. Also, [...]
Tagged as:
Citrus,
disease,
garden pests
