What nature achieves by chance, man attempts by choice. Walter T. Swingle, at the USDA nursery in the Little River district of northeastern Miami, succeeded in hybridizing C. sinensis and C. reticulata. Around 1913, he sent the ensuing tree for trial to Mr. R.D. Hoyt in Safety Harbor Florida. Hoyt passed on budwood to his nephew, Charles Murcott Smith, who propagated it in 1922. This plant became reasonably successful, so that several nurseries started commercializing it in 1928 under the name Honey Murcott, or just Murcott. The name has been used ever after.
