A friend found this lost red navel in my tree today and surprise it has turned orange. I've never seen one this color. Usually they are the color of a red grapefruit.



I thought I'd eaten all the red navels about a month ago!

this was the first year my 2 years old 5 gal in the ground red navel held fruit on the tree .....dropped a few in august but still gave me 25-30 large red navel still have a few on the tree...i wanted to leave them on longer but i have a ditch behind my house and this is the first year i'm having probelem with rats or squires eating my citrus...they have eaten at least 25 or more sunbust tangerine tree had over 120, washington navel eaten about 5 out of 40...started on the lemon and stopped....satsuma eaten about 20 or more out of 130....havent touched the grapefruits or blood orange....tree only has about 15.....i have put out some green pellets and have caught a few in traps....any ideals on how to stop them.....help.....

Beautiful piece of fruit either way.

Someone with more direct knowledge may confirm or deny - since red colored flesh and variegated foliage are chimera traits, they may sometimes revert to normal coloration at times.

The only chimera that I own is a pink lemonade and it has so far been a bit of a dud production-wise. A handsome dud though. LOL

It would be interesting to know if just letting the fruit sit longer, or other environmental factors causes chimera fruit to revert.

Hard to say as mine don't last long. Everyone loves them & they are long gone by mid Dec. every year.

So far, my Cara Cara (Red Navel) has maintained its pink/red flesh. (And Laaz, all my fruits have little navels, too.) But, according to UC Riverside Citrus Variety Collection, early comments back in 1988 (that was 25 years ago), make that comment, but I have not seen that, nor have I heard that from any of my CRFG members. Now, that being said, this particular cultivar, as well as the Fukumoto Navel, do tend to sport variegated limbs (if you notice, Laaz' Red Navel is variegated!), so it is entirely possible for any Cara Cara to revert back to orange-colored flesh, as well as decide to sport some pretty variegated branches.

And having the fruit sit longer on the tree will not cause the pulp to change - the genes can't revert in that way. A chimera mutation occurs in a meristem (an area of active growth and division), and is replicated by normal cell division, creating parts of the plant with different genetic constitutions. Plant tissues are produced in distinct layers, and some of the most common plant chimeras are the result of a mutation in one of these layers. So, once formed, the chimera change remains. If the fruit is being borne from a branch where that change has occurred, all fruit on that branch will be a chimera representation, unless the somewhere further down that changed branch, it then reverts back, then producing regular fruit.

Here is an interesting, if not somewhat technical, discussion on citrus chimeras written in part by HB Frost. It's an older article, but still very interesting and informative. I know you have some horticultural background, mrclint, so thought you'd appreciate this article:

http://www.genetics.org/content/27/6/619.full.pdf

I find the chimera subject fascinating, as I have had a patient that was a chimera. It was a premie that I was taking care of, and we were trying to blood type the baby, and coming up with some weird results. Come to find out the baby had most likely been a set of fraternal twins, but one twin had been absorbed extremely early on, and the one singleton birth ended up absorbing some/all of their fraternal twin's DNA, including the blood type, which was different. I remember our neonatologist telling us to remember this, as we'd probably never see this again in our careers, even though it isn't as rare as we might think. Just finding it is kind of the rare thing.

I'm sure Dr. Manners can provide more information about citrus chimeras, or maybe even provide some more recent information or scholarly articles about chimera formation in citrus. Very, very fascinating subject.

Nice looking fruit Laaz. Great color.

hoosierquilt, plant mutations and survival mechanisms are fascinating topics. Allelochemicals are another area of interest for me. Your first hand story would be something for a horror movie or an episode of House (too bad it's no longer in production).

The note in the UCR page uses the word "could" and needs some followup/clarification. What if a grower sells Cara Cara and the consumer gets a non-red flesh version? Seems like we would have heard some chatter about this by now. Either way, it's a great piece or fruit, but as you know I still have a preference for the old reliable Washington Navel (which are off-the-hook good right now).

It was on CSI Las Vegas.

A human Chimera puzzled them with different genetic traces on corpses ...

Or perhaps the orange in the first photo never colored up to begin with...

So I went out & picked my last variegated Cara cara today. Hasn't lost any color. Actually I think it's darker.

Beautiful piece of fruit. I don't recall ever having a Cara Cara with seeds. And I've never seen a navel orange of any kind with that many seeds. Is that a climate/environment issue?

That I can't tell you. It is in a high density planting with grapefruit, yuzu, ponkan, meyer lemon, limquat, satsuma, kumquat, sanbokan, clementine all within 30 ft of this tree. I would assume it would be seedless if grown by itself.

Yes, this was a really weird experience with this little baby. Definitely something out of a science fiction novel. And, I agree with getting that desicription updated on UCR's site. The Cara Cara is widely sold, especially in our neck of the woods, and I would think that we'd have heard a lot of complaints about the tree reverting by now, and I haven't heard any of that. So, feel very certain the fruit will stay pink, with maybe a rare branch reverting back every now and again. And yes, the Washington Navel is still our "citrus standard" in S. California for sure.

MrClint wrote:

Nice looking fruit Laaz. Great color. hoosierquilt, plant mutations and survival mechanisms are fascinating topics. Allelochemicals are another area of interest for me. Your first hand story would be something for a horror movie or an episode of House (too bad it's no longer in production). The note in the UCR page uses the word "could" and needs some followup/clarification. What if a grower sells Cara Cara and the consumer gets a non-red flesh version? Seems like we would have heard some chatter about this by now. Either way, it's a great piece or fruit, but as you know I still have a preference for the old reliable Washington Navel (which are off-the-hook good right now).

My budwood came from Joe Real years ago, so the source my have been Gene Lester. That I don't know, but it definitely came from CA.

Well, your Cara Cara is really beautiful, Laaz. They ripen here in Feb/March, so I'm going to wait another month or so, and check for sweetness.