Cara Cara oranges

Cara Cara oranges have just recently shown up in local grocery stores. Novel fruits are always something TPP tries and his life list of fruits is pretty impressive. In this case, the Cara Cara is a variety of navel orange originally from Venezuela and is either a mutation or accidental hybrid, more likely the former because they are seedless like all navel oranges. This variety has only been around since the mid-1980s, and is probably showing up now because production has reached a critical mass. As navel oranges go, the Cara Cara is on the small to medium size and very round. The flesh is a reddish orange color (sometimes labelled "pink" navel orange) although not as dark red as "blood" oranges.  The samples TPP has purchased have a firm texture, and a surprisingly distinctive taste, sweeter than the usual navel orange and with some tropical fruit overtones. Rating: very good! Give them a try if you see them in the market. They worked great in a citrus based fruit salad. Image by WLU courtesy of the wikimedia creative commons. 

Naval orange?

Perhaps yesterday's blog about scurvy subtly influenced someone to ask about the naval orange.  Of course, it was the use of lime juice to prevent scurvy in the British navy that resulted in the nickname "limey".  However this isn't a naval

nickname at all, it's navel.  Yes, an orange with a belly button.  If you slice a navel orange in half top to bottom you'll see that it's really two oranges, a large one almost surrounding a small one at the apex of the fruit, and the slight protrusion of this 2nd small fruit through the rind of the larger fruit produces the navel (bottom of image) on the apex of the fruit.  [Image courtesy of Brandizzi, Wikimedia Creative Commons] This type of orange has probably arisen more than once, or if just once, this sport, this mutant showed up 200-400 years ago.  In addition to having this double ovary, one on top of the other, the mutation rendered the fruit sterile so it produces no seeds.  Good for the eater, bad for the plant.  Navel oranges can only be reproduced asexually by cuttings or buds grafted onto other root stock.  So no navy involved, and no umbilical scar either really, but let's be careful with those vowels people.  Oh, and this is a fun fact too.  The flesh you eat in citrus fruits is not derived from the ovary wall; the juice sacs are modified hairs (look at one carefully) that fill the locule, the space, around the seeds, if the fruit has any.