Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
| from the November 27, 2011 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá
Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO BITTER or SOUR ORANGE Down here it's exactly the time to enjoy eating oranges because trees in orchards are loaded with them. Fresh oranges right off the tree are sooooo sweet. People in villages generally have their own trees next to their houses and folks in larger towns often have kinfolk out in the country supplying them, so in the frutería I visit each weekend in Pisté the cost is right. I buy as many as will fit into my bags. What I buy in Pisté is the "sweet orange," which people here call "Chinas." But right below the frutería's China bin there's a pile of what in English we call bitter or sour oranges, and sometimes I think the locals consume them even more than the sweet ones. Bitter oranges make great lemonade, plus it's nothing to see a Mexican cut one in half, salt it generously, sprinkle hot-chili powder over it, and eat it. Gringos find that remarkable because sour oranges are as sour as chili peppers are hot. Sweet and Sour Orange trees are not just varieties of the same species; they're entirely different species. Sweet Orange is Citrus x sinensis (which agrees with the local name "China," since "sinensis" means "Chinese), and Bitter Orange is CITRUS x AURANTIUM. I find nothing bitter about bitter oranges, but my impression is that up North bitter orange is a commoner name than sour orange. Sour oranges also are called Seville oranges. Here the locals call them naranjas agrias, naranja meaning orange and agria meaning sour. You can see a couple of sour oranges at the top of this page. A cut-open sour orange from that tree, displaying a thicker rind than most of us are accustomed to seeing on sweet oranges, and very many more and larger seeds, is shown below:
A picture focusing on the "winged petioles" of our Sour Orange tee's leaves, typical of citrus plants, is below:
Sour Orange is native to southeastern Asia. Arabs in Arabia had it by the 9th Century. It was reported in Sicily as early as 1002, and then for 500 years it was the only orange known to Europeans. It was recorded growing here in Mexico as early as 1568. I'll bet that the Sour Oranges found in little Maya villages around us are uncontaminated by genes of later-developed varieties. I'm thinking that here we have Sour Oranges as they were 500 years ago in Europe, "the real thing." Lots of Sour Orange varieties have been produced through selective breeding. In Japan and China they produce a "Daidai" variety prized for its flower buds, which are dried and mixed with tea for their scent. The "Paraguay" has sweet flesh. The "Vermilion Globe" is grown for its vigorous rootstock onto which sweet oranges are grafted. The "Oklawaha" produces large fruits rich in pectin and exceptionally good in marmalades. The "Bouquet" grows to only about ten feet tall (3m), produces small, brightly orange fruits, and is grown as an ornamental. Despite the many uses of Sour Orange trees, nowadays the species is grown mainly for its rootstock onto which sprouts of other even more commercially important citrus crops are grafted. Sour Orange trees produce very vigorous root systems that do well over a wide range of soil conditions. Until early 2011 most experts thought that Sour Orange trees constituted a regular species. However, in January, 2011 Chinese researchers who did gene sequencing studies showed that Sour Oranges, like Sweet Oranges, are hybrids of Tangerine (also called Mandarin), Citrus reticulata, and Pummelo, Citrus grandis. Since the species is a hybrid the "x" needs to be present in the binomial. You can review that paper, which also reveals the ancestry of other citrus species, here. Good cooks are discovering Bitter Orange more every day. On a Purdue University page there's a fine survey of its uses under the heading "Food Uses" at http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/sour_orange.html. |
