Seville Sour OrangeSEVILLE SOUR

The first orange cultivated in North America, brought by the Spanish into Florida and the West Indies in the sixteenth century, this bitter tasting cross between a pomello and a mandarin orange was widely cultivated throughout the Mediterannean, valued for use in marmelade, in medicine, and in perfume. Its origins are ancient and south Asian. High in pectin, possessing a rind rich in volate oil, and a hardy grower, the Seville became a fixture along the Southeast coast after Native peoples adopted the fruit and naturalized it in landscapes as far north as South Carolina.  Indeed, when English colonists settled Carolina in the mid-17th century, they believed the sour orange and indigenous fruit of the region, for it grew untended in the wild along the Atlantic coast.  

When sweet oranges began to be grown in quantity during the early 19th century, the most canny nurserymen and producers grafted sweet oranges on old Spanish Seville stocks found along bodies of water. This greatly enhanced the disease resistance of the sweet orange.  In the late 18th and 19th century, the Seville found favor in gardens as an aromatic tree and as an ornamental.  Orange water, sachets imbrued with orange oil, orange beverages (beer, brandy, orangeade)depended upon the Seville for presence.  As a flavoring agenct, Seville extract is used in confecionery.  The scraped peel decocted in brandy became an import variety of bitters, a stomaichic once thought to be a medicinal tonic.

"Fruit globular, except at the two ends, where it is somewhat compressed; about the size of the sweet orange, but the pericarp is rougher, darker in colour, being deep orange-red or red, the pulp very bitter and sour, and the rind more aromatic, and very bitter" [Robert Bentley, A Text Book or Organic Materia Medica, 83]. There are concave oil cysts in the Seville's rind.  Over the centuries several strains of orange emerged: large fruited and seed, the Daidai strain with large flowers and acid flesh, prized for its aromatics, bittersweets, found in Florida and distinguished by red flesh, and the Indian Karna, a red flowered sour orange that is thought to have crossed with a lemon.  

Several strains remain widely available through commercial sources.  

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

David S. Shields