History of cultivation
The sweet orange does not occur in the wild. It is believed to have been first cultivated in southern China, northeastern India, or perhaps southeastern Asia (formerly Indochina).[3]
The Persian orange, grown widely in southern Europe after its introduction to Italy in the 11th century, was bitter. It was used primarily for medicinal purposes.[3]
Italian traders might have introduced it to the Mediterranean area after 1450. Portuguese navigators have also been credited with bringing orange trees to the Mediterranean region around 1500.[3] After introduction of the sweet orange, it was quickly adopted as an edible fruit; it was so highly regarded that wealthy persons grew oranges in private conservatories, called orangeries. Certainly by 1646 it was well-known in Europe.[3]
In some South East Indo-European languages the orange was named after Portugal, which was formerly the main source of imports of sweet oranges. Examples are Bulgarian portokal портокал, Greek portokali πορτοκάλι, Persian portaghal پرتقال, Albanian "portokall", Macedonian portokal портокал, and Romanian portocală. In Italian the word portogallo to refer to the orange fruit is dialectal.[36] It means literally "Portugal". Similar words are in common use in most Italian dialects across the whole country.[37] Related names can also be found in other languages: Turkish Portakal, Arabic al-burtuqal البرتقال, Amharic birtukan, and Georgian phortokhali.
Portuguese, Spanish, Arab, and Dutch sailors planted citrus trees along trade routes to prevent scurvy. On his second voyage in 1493, Christopher Columbus took the seeds of oranges, lemons and citrons to Haiti and the Caribbean. They were introduced in Florida (along with lemons) in 1513 by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, to California by the Franciscans in the 18th century, and were introduced to Hawaii in 1792.
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