One of my first purchases after moving to California in 1996 was a bag of a dozen navel oranges at the Arcata Farmer's Market. That was accidentally poetic in that when I was very young, that's all I knew about California apart from television: it was where they grew oranges. It was the 1950s and the few people we knew who made the long fabled voyage to California, invariably returned with oranges. They were much prized.
But even though most of the orange groves in southern California are long gone (Kim Stanley Robinson played among them as a child, and as a teenager watched them destroyed to make way for more and more suburbia), there are still navel oranges grown there.
Navel oranges are seedless, and the first tree to grow them was apparently a mutation, an accidental hybrid, a sport of nature. This was in Brazil. Because they are seedless, new trees come only from cuttings from the old. So at first all navel orange trees derived from that one tree.
Disease wiped out the navels of Brazil in the 1930s. By then fortunately California had its own variety, begun in the 1870s by a recent California settler, a woman who was an abolitionist and a Suffragette. Nobody was then certain where the navel orange would best grow in America, but when she requested and was sent two cuttings from the Department of Agriculture in Washington (hence they are still called Washington navel oranges), she planted them in her front yard in Riverside. From those two flourishing trees, the navel orange became a leader in the California citrus industry, which by the 1920 was the second largest income generator in the state, next to oil. Now every navel orange tree in the world is a descendant of those two trees in Riverside. One of the two trees survived to this day, an officially designated Historical Landmark.
Though I kept buying those bags at the Farmer's Market once in awhile, I wasn't over my suspicions of oranges. Most of the oranges back in PA came from Florida, and they were frequently too tart and even sour, and always very acidic. Enjoying the fruit of the orange after peeling it was hit and miss. If it's a miss, you're left with a peeled orange nobody wants.
But for at least the past ten years and probably longer, I have gloried in the navel orange. I bought them at the supermarket--they are typically large (sometimes very large, not much smaller than a grapefruit.) Their skin is thick but easy to peel--it's not entirely unusual to peel them in one piece. Inside they are almost invariably sweet, and never acidic. They have a unique texture. On most days a navel orange and a cup of coffee still are my entire breakfast.
In more recent years they seem to have become more scarse, and available less often during the year. They are a winter fruit but for years they disappeared only in August for maybe a couple of months. In recent years they've come and gone, and sometimes they are much smaller. So when I get the big ones I tend to eat half at a time, and that's good enough.
I don't know how climate distortion is affecting them, though they are said to be hardy, but climate is very quietly affecting the quality, availability and prices of a lot of fruits and vegetables. The Florida orange crop has been severely depleted. Though I consider the navel orange to be the closest to perfection, other varieties of oranges have gone through fashionable periods, so some growers are tempted to stop growing the navels.
But this year, after months with fairly small, and thin-skinned varieties, the classic large thick-skinned sweet navel began appearing. I've had a good supply for several months now, though the last trip to the supermarket suggested that they may be diminishing. But for as long as they last, I'm going to be grateful that such a wonderful thing is still around.
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