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Ship dates: Jul 20
Aug 3, 17, 31
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Shipments to these states will resume in November.
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Florida Fruit Shippers®
PO Box 530456
St. Petersburg, FL 33747
1-800-715-8279
Summer Hours: M-W 8-5 EST
Fax: 800-847-8936
Phone/Fax: 727-341-2001
eMail: ffs@orangesonline.com
Florida Navel Oranges
| FastFacts | |
|---|---|
| Availability | Nov 17 to Jan 11 |
| Status | Avail. Next Season |
| Shipped to | US* (excluding AZ, CA, LA, TX) & Canada** |
| *excluding AK, HI **excluding T, V, X, Y codes | |
Florida Navel Oranges are loved for their incredible sweetness and rich, delicious juice. For generations, Florida Navel Oranges have been a much loved and much appreciated holiday tradition. Available during the holiday season, they make a great gift at Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year.
Florida Navel Oranges are seedless, thin-skinned and easy to peel and section, which makes them great for fresh eating.
Like all Florida oranges, Navels are rich in Vitamin C and other nutrients. When used for juice they should be fresh-squeezed right before drinking for the best flavor and highest Vitamin C content.
Availability
Our Florida Navel Oranges are available November through January.
History
The Navel Orange originally came to Florida from Brazil in the mid-19th century.
A paper entitled "The Bahia or Washington Navel in the United States" by W. A. Taylor of the USDA, written in 1902, refers to a "very good illustration of such an orange" that appears in a "Natural History of Trees and Fruits published at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1662." Taylor speculates that the Navel variety was likely known for centuries, having appeared as bud variations in widely separated regions of the world and then propagated through grafting.
Citrus, A History by Pierre Laszlo (The University of Chicago Press, 2007) indicates that the Florida Navel Orange was first discovered in Brazil in the late 18th century as a chance hybrid found on a branch of a Selecta sweet orange tree in Bahia. It was immediately embraced for its sweetness, juiciness and seedless nature. Due to the formation on the blossom end of the fruit that looks like a human navel, it was called the Umbigo, Portuguese for "navel." This formation is actually a second, immature orange that forms in the fruit opposite the stem.
It was the Bahia, or Umbria, orange that was first brought to Florida around 1840. It is generally thought these original trees were all destroyed by soldiers during the Seminole Indian war and were no longer found in Florida until the USDA distributed Bahia Orange trees, also called Washington Navels, in 1873. However a letter to the editor of the New York Times was published on May 4, 1902 under the headline "First Seedless Oranges - A Writer Says Florida Grew Them Before California." In it Thomas D. James writes that he planted an orange grove near Palatka, Florida in the early 1870s that "had a number of trees budded with Bahia or navel oranges." He says the buds came from local fruit-bearing trees that must have been planted before the USDA sent the saplings to Florida in 1870.
Because the Navel orange is propagated by taking cuttings from a tree and grafting them onto root stock, the Florida Navel Oranges we enjoy today are likely direct descendants of the Umbigo found in Bahia, Brazil over a century ago.
Nutritional Information for Florida Navel Oranges
One whole navel orange, about 3" in diameter, contains:
- 1 g protein
- 11.6 g carbohydrates
- 2.4 g dietary fiber
- 65 mg calcium
- 283 mg potassium
- 26 mg phosphorus
- 340 IU vitamin A
- 105 mg vitamin C
- 86% water
Florida Fruit Shippers® is a registered trademark of Vegetable Kingdom Inc.