Satsuma Orange
SATSUMA

This cold tolerant mandarin orange (Citrus reticulata, came to the United States from Japan in 1876.  Its mild, sweet flavor, paucity of seeds (four per fruit, maximum), and handsome appearance in the pot or yard won it immediate favor.  Two growers claimed responsibility for importing the fruit: Dr. George Hall of Florida in 1876 and Mrs. Van Valkenberg, also of Florida, in 1878.  The latter grower proved the more generous in distributing bud wood, and so has been granted the honor of being "the mother of the Satsuma" in America.  It was she who recommended that the Japanese name--Oonshiu--be jettisoned in favor of Satsuma, a major city in Japan, where she had lived. Because it could tolerate temperatures into the mid-20s farenheit, colder than other citrus cultivars except some naturalized wild sour oranges, it became the variety of greatest interest to gulf coast orchardists in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.  

The Satsuma tree has a dwarf habit, a spreading configuration, broad leaves that grow upward, often at a 90 degree angle from the branchlets.  The branches are thornless and the green foliage is so persistent that it is a virtual evergreen.  It begins bearing in the second year.  In some extremely southern locales the fruit ripens green. Peter Farney Williams, an early promoter of the fruit in the South, supplied a botanical description of the fruit: "Form oblate; sections frequently showing through the rind; size variable, 1 7/8ths x 2 5/8ths inches and 2 5/8ths x 3 7/16ths inches representing the variation in size; color, orange yellow; base usually slightly creased; calyx, small; apex, scarred with a round brownish spot situated in a broad shallow depression; rind, 1/8 inch thick, inclined to be rough; oil cells, large, conspicuous, frequently depressed, though sometimes flush with the surface; flesh coarse grained, deep orange in color; juice sacks short, broad; juice abundant, yellowish orange in color; pulp melting; acidity and sweetness well balanced; flavor sprightly, agreeable; quality excellent; pith open with the sections, frequently separated at the inner edges; generally seedless, though occasionally from one to four seeds are found, top-shaped, broad, plump, not distinctly beaked as in others of the group; season October-November" [The Satsuma Orange (Mobile, 1911), 149]. 

Nurseries that carried the Satsuma prior to 1920 in the South included--

American Exotic Nursery, Seven Oaks FL; Fortscher Seed, New Orleans LA; Glen St. Mary Nursery, Glen Saint Mary FL; Jessamine Nursery, Jessamine FL; Lakeland Nursery, Lakeland FL; Orlando Nursery, Orlando FL; Pomona Nursery, Mcclenny FL; Royal Palm Nursery, Oneco FL; Semi-Tropical Nurseries, Orlando FL; Seven Oaks Nursery, Seven Oaks FL; Steckler, New Orleans FL

Image: U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705, Amanda Newton, 1911

David S. Shields