Valencia Orange
VALENCIA

The late maturing sweet orange came into notice in both Florida and California in the 1870s.  While its origins appear to be Chinese, it came into the hands of London nurseryman Thomas Rivers who forwarded it to General Sanford of Patalka, Florida in 1870.  Six years later the same broker provided A. B. Chapman of San Gabriel, California, with trees.  Chapman would disseminate bud wood to growers throughout California.  The variety had different names in both locales, being called Hart's in Florida and Rivers Late in California until Chapman, crediting the opinion of a Spanish grower, that the fruit was "La Naranja tarde de Valencia," renamed the fruit the Valencia Late.  In the last decade of the 19th century the "Late" was dropped and it became the Valencia sweet orange.  [Archibal D. Shamel, "History of the Valencia Variety," Citrus Fruit Improvement USDA Bulletin 624 (1918), 2]. 

The Valencia was the second most popular crop orange in California, trailing the Washington Navel, and remains in cultivation though now threatned by disease.  By 1900 growers recognized that the variety had several strains--one that cropped on alternate years, one the cropped annually, and an erratic cropper. The fruit of all these strains had the same configuration: globular, flattened at the blossom end, medium size, smooth skinned, thin rind, intensely orange.  Flesh juicy and sweet, with 3 to 10 seeds.  A corrugated skin variant emerged on less productive trees of the Valencia type.  A second variant, with an enlongated fruit emerged in California, but not in Florida.  

In California the variety became hugely important, and the focus of a fair and exhibition in 1921.  Valencia California was named after the fruit grown thereabouts, not the Spanish city.  In Florida its vulnerability to cold led to experimentation on what stocks could be used in a grafting scheme that could give the fruit greater cold hardiness.  It is still a crop fruit in Florida.  In both California and Florida it has been valued as juice variety particularly since the 1920s.  

Image: U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705, Royal Steadman, 1919

David S. Shields