Old Southern Orchards

JAFFA

An egg-shaped orange that developed into the major crop citrus of Palestine during the the 1890s when Zionist Jewish settlers developed the groves nineteenth century on the Plain of Sharon. Exported from the port of Jaffa, the orange became a particular favorite of English consumers in the first decades of the twentieth century.
The orange was first noticed in Jaffa by Europeans during the Napoleonic incursions at the beginning of the 1800s. The reputation of the orange in the eastern Mediterranean in the mid-19th century burgeoned and it became an article of coastal commerce. It was then known as the Shamouti orange. It was first exported to England in 1875 and was thought to have been related to the form of the Malta orange that would eventually mutate into the Blood Orange. The oval form of the Jaffa was not attained until the 1870s when an oval sport of the Shamouti was carefully propagated and became the byword of regional quality. The improved Shamouti had a thick rin , a requirement for an export orange. ["Jaffa Orangaes," Riverside Daily Press (May 27, 1901), 6].

"The Jaffa orange is one of the largest, larger even than the Washington Navel. Its form is obovate, its skin very thick, and its fruit seedless. The tree is not spiny, and the fruit, therefore, is never scarred. Its shipping qualities are excellent. It is packed with very little care as compared with the methods used in California. The cases are thrown violently into the steamers, and they are often carried for three weeks without refrigeration and subjected to the greatest extremes of temperature; and yet the oranges reach the English markets in good condition and command good prices. It is at least a month from the time they are picked until they are purchased by the wholesale dealer, and during all of that time they are without cold storage." ["Early Orange History in Palestine and Elsewhere," Riverside Daily Press (August 12, 1910), 4].

Before it was taken up by Jewish settlers as their cash crop, young trees were shipped both to London and the United States. The American versions tended that have a few seeds and was less egg-shaped that the original. Nor were they grafted on a sweet lime stock as they were in Jaffa. It never established itself as a crop orange in the United States and when mechanical picking and sorting became standard in the citrus industry, the oblong shape of the Jaffa became a commercial liability. It remained a conversation fruit, planted by evangelical planters who desired to have a fruit with connection to the scriptural geography. In Riverside, California, the most famous grove was located on Victoria Avenue, and landmark from the 1890s through the 1930s.

Image: U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705, Royal Steadman, circa 1920

David S. Shields