I've been picking up blood oranges at the market lately and I've noticed that they are usually labeled as "Moro Blood Oranges" although they don't all seem to be the same. They are all the size of a tennis ball or smaller and most are completely orange on the outside, giving no hint of what is on the inside. A few have a slight red or purple blush. The fruit from my Moro at home currently have a red blush on about 50% of every fruit.

Yesterday, I was at the store and in the middle of the "Moro" oranges (which are all orange in color), is this one orange that is as red as a red delicious apple over 100% of the outside. The only oranges I've seen that were this red were in pictures of Smith Red Valencia's

Here is a picture of it with another blood orange and a Lane Navel, for comparison. Do you guys think this is a Moro or something else?



Jeff

Another question I had was about the size of Moro oranges. All the ones I have seen, both at the store and on my tree, are the size of a tennis ball or slightly smaller but my local nursery has two trees labeled as Moro but the fruit on them are as big as a softball and, so far, have no blush. Is it possible for Moro's to get that large or are these likely mislabeled?

Jeff

Sometimes my mandarin can get as large as my cocktail grapefruit. The reason is that I have more fruit sets on my cocktail than on some mandarin cultivar branches on the same tree. Fruits can vary in size a lot depending on canopy size and number of fruits per tree.

The differences in the skin pigmentation could be due to differences in sunlight exposure and temperature variations within the same tree.

In Australia, the Arnold Blood, ( possibly a seedling of Moro ) produces fairly variably pigmented fruit from tree to tree in the same small area, and also on each tree, probably due to shade/ sunlight.