1.It's marmalade making tonight.
Seville Oranges from Spain are currently available for their short season in the UK. See photos below. It always amuses me when I see the shops have to put out a danger warning - 'These oranges are highly acidic, DO NOT EAT FRESH!'
2. I've been arranging a trip to Tuscany, Italy, at the end of April. Every two years the little village of Buggiano Castello opens its private citrus gardens for a couple of sundays. I'll be there!
I'll also make my third visit to the Tintori Nursery and their exhibition greenhouse citrus garden. Just so I'll be in their good books when I visit, I've put up on my website a further page of pictures which they sent me a while back because mine were too old. I hope to correct that with new photos from my planned visit. Tintori have a really outstanding collection and nursery.
See http://www.homecitrusgrowers.co.uk/citrusplaces/tintori/tintoriphotos.html
and http://www.borgodegliagrumi.it/index_eng.html

Seville Oranges

Mike/Citrange

I would love to taste them fresh! Unfortunately they are not available on the market here...

Care to send me some seeds?

Hi Mike !

I love your new pages, as I love your whole site !!!
Just I always wished you put even more, for your photos and infos are just unique in the www ...

Would you like to exchange the seeds with that from old original Moro Blood Orange ?

http://www.fete-du-citron.com/

Yes, Menton's 'Fete du Citron' is also on my list. But I only get permission for one citrus trip each year!!
Seville Oranges are just Citrus aurantium bitter oranges which I thought were fairly easily available. But if you want seeds I will go and buy a few more oranges - just send me a forum Private Message with your mailing address.
Citrange/Mike

Mike, by what mean do you intend to go to Italy?
If it's by car I should be very happy if you can visit me on one of both ways.

Many thanks for the invite, but I've already booked a cheap flight from London to Pisa and then renting a car for a few days.
Mike.

OK

I ate one of those fresh. It reminds me more of a yellow (duncan?) grapefruit than of an orange. It was very juicy and had a (for me) pleasant sweet/soar taste but very different from sweet oranges (sinensis). The membranes have a bitterness comparable to (if not the same as) the bitterness of grapefruit membranes. Not bad at all!

The after taste remains in the mouth for a very long time.

No, different sour orange, mrtexas. Here's a link to our common sour orange rootstock that was used for years and years here in the USA:

http://www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/standard_sour1.html

Although, if you look through the "Rootstock" section of the UCR Citrus Variety Collection, there is a Smooth Flat Seville sour orange that is also used as rootstock, but this is not the sour orange rootstock you're thinking of, this Seville sour orange rootstock is not commonly used here.

mrtexas wrote:

I wonder if these are the same as the sour oranges that are used as rootstock in USA? The ones for rootstock here are so sour they can't be sweetened with any amount of sugar, I've tried. I made marmalade for several years with them and stopped because it was so sour. The commercial English bitter marmalade available here tastes nothing like what I made. The skin on what is available here is much thinner than in your picture. I don't see seville orange in the CCCP budwood release. I see smooth flat seville which is apparently poorman orange. Fraser seville, the same as marmalade seville?

Just a heads up, but sour orange is very susceptible to Tristeza.

Which is why it was replaced here in commercial groves in California with Carizzo/Troyer about 40 years ago. But, interestingly, there are still many, many old orchards still on sour orange with zero issues here in California. The 147 acre Valencia orange orchard behind me, for example. There is just no matching Valencia oranges on sour orange, in my opinion. They are sweeter and juicier. Some growers who still have their citrus on sour orange are having a bit of a Renaissance with their fruits, and marketing them as "heirlooms":

http://www.ceceliapack.com/skyvalley_navels.html

They are good. Better than on trifoliate, but alas, yes, very susceptible to Tristeza. We don't have any reportings of Tristeza here in San Diego county, and apparently, they must not either, up in the foothills of Fresno (very close to the UC Lincove orchard, btw.) Their orchard was planted in the 1930's. The orchard behind me in the early 1940's.

Dr. Manners would know, but I don't believe anything in FL is on sour orange any more.