Orange

“ Take the common round orange as an example, its well-balanced and evenly grown head, its dark glossy green foliage, its wealth of white blossoms, which perfume the whole neighbourhood, or its mass of golden fruit between its dark-green leaves, render it one of the most beautiful of fruit trees at all times, but especially so when covered with blossoms or ripe fruit. ”

“ I imagine how a fine old orange-tree, that bears oranges with the thinnest possible skin and with no pips, juicy and rich, might feel that it has outgrown the fruit of its first years, when the skin was half an inch thick, the pips innumerable, and the eatable portion small and poor. ”

“ The orange-grove is lovely at all times, mysterious when the long alleys are dark against the red sunset, the fruit glimmering like a feast of lanterns at twilight; and in the pleasant mornings sparkling among the glossy leaves like little suns newly risen; while we catch the perfume of blossoms heralding in a new crop, though the last still hangs upon the bough. Here and there is an example of the enormous shaddock, which resembles the orange in appearance but the lemon in character. ”

“ Now let us see how we get the brilliant orange of the sky itself. When the evening is perfectly clear and free from mist and cloud, the orange in the sky is very feeble, showing that the intensity depends upon their presence. ”

“ Instead of the sober browns, the plain yellows, and the occasional patches of red or blue or orange that adorn our European species, we meet with the most intense metallic blues, the purest satiny greens, the most gorgeous crimsons, not in small spots but in large masses, relieved by a black border or background. ”

“ An Orange tree, with its rich glossy foliage, its perfumed ivory flowers and buds, and abundant golden fruit, is an exquisite creation of nature; but an Orange grove has no ideality. All fruit trees have a beautiful inflorescence—few have sentiment. The tint of a blossoming Peach tree is perfect; but I care not for a Peach orchard. ”

“ From low, broad spreading trees depended the grape fruit, as large as an infant's head and yellow as gold, while the orange, lime and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, green and ripe fruit all together, met the eye at every turn, and filled the garden with fragrance. ”

“ It is here that the orange reaches its best perfection, and on every hand are groves laden with the yellow fruit, while the more modest banana bush bends beneath the weight of its own deliciousness, and pours out its honey to the bees in rich extravagance. Nature is so luxurious in her productions that she supports nearly all the plants and trees and flowers belonging to this delightful climate, so that within the limits of an orange orchard may be found nearly everything that grows in the semi-tropics. ”

“ Everywhere one meets the pungent odour of wild fruit. Here too I found orange and lemon-groves that almost rivalled those of my Mediterranean home. You have heard of those wonderful trees with their wealth of blossoms that live one day, changing colour three times in the daylight hours: white in the morning, yellow at noon, red at sundown—blushing their life away.
"The heat of the days was intense, but at sunset a cool breeze would spring up, laden with the perfume of orange and lemon-groves. ”

“ Your description of the orange lands makes me more than ever eager to see them,—in particular the phenomenon of a real lover of Nature such as you mention, for one does feel so wholly alone in the midst of this metallic, money-clinking crowd. ”

“ But on the edge of the forest, steeped in sunshine and blest with room, there grows one grape that is purple and one orange that is sweet. And at last all the thousand acid vines and the ten thousand bitter orange-trees perish, while the one purple vine survives, takes feet to itself and journeys to all vineyards, while the orange of the golden heart gets wings for itself and crosses vale and mountain—it could not be otherwise, they are the higher. ”

“ Land of flowers and fruitfulness of the vine—the olive and orange—all that blushes in beauty and charms with delicacy, is spread o'er thy green fields, or grows in thy empire garden; but thy children are deep in pollution, and spring like thorns and thistles amid thy floral scenes of endless enchantment. ”

“ Green, grey, orange, purple, and, in the farthest distance, blue as of the heaven itself, make the land one vast rainbow, and fit dwelling-place for its sunny folk, still happy and industrious—once the most cultivated and luxurious people in Europe. ”

“ No names of trees are remembered—a glorious confusion comprehends in one the whole leafy race—orange, and purple, and scarlet, and crimson, are all seen to be there, and interfused through the silent splendour is aye felt the presence of that terrestrial green, native and unextinguishable in earth's bosom, as that celestial blue is that of the sky. ”

“ Large, ripe oranges are sold two for a penny. One timid, half-clad, pretty young girl of native blood held up to us diffidently a bunch of white, fragrant orange blossoms which were eagerly secured and enjoyed, the child could not know how much. ”

“ More leaves are falling on the woodland paths, and the trees are throwing out their last bright autumn tints of red and brown and richest orange, that tell all too plainly of the death that lies before them. ”

“ The Orange Garden
(Translation from the Moorish by Walter Harris of Tangier)
I
I cannot find this Orange Garden fair:
⁠The dim dishevelled grass is wet and chill.
Desolate, croaking frogs distress the air,
⁠But birds, if ever birds come here, are still.
Even the oranges have lost their light
⁠And droop forlorn beneath the sombre green. ”

“ In proportion as we find in literature abstract thinking, statement of general truth or plain fact, facsimile description or mere sentimentalizing, in that proportion do we find it dull and inartistic. "The orange is a reddish-yellow semi-tropical fruit," is a statement of fact plain and scientific. It would be so inartistic as to be absurd in a line of poetry. "Among the dark boughs the golden orange glows," lifts the object into the world of art, sets it in a picture, even gives it to us in the round, makes it moving and vital. ”

“ Everywhere the trees wear their autumnal dress, so that the whole landscape is red, russet, orange, and yellow, blending in the distance into a rich tint of brown-orange, or nearly that,—except the green expanse so definitely hemmed in by the higher ground. ”

“ From this it is evident that the knowledge of an orange, although a unity of experience in adult life, is really a complex, or synthesis, made up of a large number of different elements.
What is true of our idea of an orange is true of every other idea. Whether it be the understanding of a plant, an animal, a city, a picture, a poem, an historical event, an arithmetical problem, or a scientific experiment, the process is always the same. ”

“ Our red haws and hips, our black elderberries, our blue sloes, and whortleberries, our white mistletoe and snowberry, and our orange sea-buckthorn, are examples of the colour-sign of edibility; and in every part of the world the same phenomenon is found. ”

“ Red breaks and diffuses with white with peculiar loveliness. It is discordant when standing with orange only, requiring to be joined or accompanied by their proper contrast, to resolve or harmonize the dissonance. In landscapes, &c., abounding with hues allied to green, a red object properly placed as regards light, shade, or distance, conduces wonderfully to the life, beauty, harmony, and connexion of the colouring. Red is, indeed, the chief element of beauty in floral nature, the prime ornament of the green garb of the vegetal kingdom. ”

“ But for the orange to be in perfection, luscious and sweet, it should be left on the tree till the end of April, or even into May. It is a beautiful sight, during the winter, to see the orange groves laden with their glorious fruit. The most delicious oranges are those with thin skins, the Mandarin or Tangerine, which ripen earlier than do the Portuguese thick-skinned species. ”

“ I defy any one to be graceful, or even dainty, with an orange; it is a great, rich, generous, pulpy fruit, and you have got to eat it in a great, rich, generous, pulpy way. How we did enjoy those oranges under the glossy green and fragrant blossoms of the trees themselves! We gave it up then and there, and said openly that no bought Northern oranges could compare with them.
“I don’t feel politically so much disturbed now about the cost of that sea-wall,” said Sara, “if it keeps this orange grove from washing away. ”

“ It can not be said that the orange goes into the child's mind by any one of its senses. By sight he gets only the colour and shape of the orange, by smell he gets only its odour, by taste its sweetness, and by touch its smoothness, rotundity, etc. Furthermore, by none of these senses does he find out the individuality of the orange, or distinguish it from other things which involve the same or similar sensations—say an apple. ”

“ A true or perfect orange is such a compound of red and yellow as will neutralize a perfect blue in equal quantity either of surface or intensity; and the proportions of such compound are five of perfect red to three of perfect yellow. When orange inclines to red, it takes the names of scarlet, poppy, &c.: in gold colour, &c., it leans towards yellow. Combined with green it forms the tertiary citrine, and with purple the tertiary russet: it also furnishes a series of warm semi-neutral colours with black, and harmonizes in contact and variety of tints with white. ”

“ The blossom of the orange is a valuable part of the produce of the tree; it is sold to those who make of it orange-flower water. The blossoms, according to the usual prodigality of nature, are in such profusion, that, were all to be allowed to become oranges, the tree would be unable to support them. ”

“ There are six or eight species of orange, the most famous of which is an orange as big as a large-sized melon or gourd. Some of these are white inside, like limes; others are as red as our oranges are yellow; and all kinds are as well-flavored as bunches of delicate grapes. ”

“ If I were yonder orange-tree,
And thou the blossom blooming there,
I would not yield a breath of thee
To scent the most imploring air. ”

“ The orange-tree is, in our view, the best worthy to represent the tree of life of any that grows on our earth. It is the fairest, the noblest, the most generous, it is the most upspringing and abundant, of all trees which the Lord God caused to grow eastward in Eden. Its wood is white and hard and tough, fit to sustain the immense weight of its fruitage. Real good ripe oranges are very heavy; and the generosity of the tree inclines it to fruit in clusters. ”

“ If we have clearly in our minds the appearance of the normal red and yellow, and clearly in our minds the orange that is made up by combining the two, we ought to be able to fix in our imagination the colors that come midway between the red and the orange, or the colors that come nearer the red or nearer the orange. ”

“ The Mock Orange bears flowers several times a year in sporadic outbursts which cover the plant with clusters of small snowy blossoms. At such times the fragrance nearby is so intense that no one in the vicinity can miss it. ”

“ On turning to the house on the right hand, an open grove of forest trees affords a view of the orangery, which is seen as perfectly as if the trees were planted on the lawn; and when the orange trees are in flower, their fragrance is diffused over the whole lawn to the house. ”

“ It was marvellous, a feast for the eyes, this complication of coloured tints, a perfect kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and blue; in one word, the whole palette of an enthusiastic colourist! ”

“ The colour of the back in this species is of a very fine orange, simple, and unadorned with any marks or spots whatever. The tint of orange varies in different shells from pale to darker, but whatever may be its deviations in this respect, the tint of colour is constantly deepest upon the back, and the transition as constantly becoming gradually paler or more diluted as the colour descends upon the sides towards the margin. ”

“ A lemon ingrafted upon an orange stock, is capable of changing the sap of the orange into its own nature, by a different arrangement of the nutritive juices. One mass of earth will give life and vigour to the bitter aloe, to the sweet cane, the cool house-leek, and the fiery mustard, the nourishing grain, and the deadly night-shade. ”

“ It's easy to forget that it takes orange trees to make oranges, for when the fruit arrives from the Midi, by their thousands of boxfuls, the tree itself, pruned and unrecognisable, is hidden in a warm greenhouse for the winter and makes only a brief summer appearance in public gardens in Paris. ”

“ Few forms of plant life present to the beholder more beautiful characteristics than an Orange tree in full bearing. Such a tree, in addition to the unripe and ripe yellow fruit has also numerous white flowers, which give off their wonderful perfume, and its symmetrically arranged branches are covered with rich dark green leaves. It is a tree that appeals not alone to the sense of taste but to the esthetic nature as well. ”

“ The orange tree is very hardy in its own habitat, and is one of the most prolific of all fruit-bearing trees, a single tree having been known to produce twenty thousand good oranges in a season. Orange trees attain great age. ”

“ The conspicuous orange flowers grow on fairly tall stalks about two feet in height and make this plant very easy to find. The stems are quite hairy, leafy and contain a milky juice. As the fruits develop in large boat-shaped pods, the seeds burst forth bearing long, silky hairs that assist the wind in scattering them over wide areas. ”

“ We first saw the orangerie, of about two hundred trees, that to Frenchmen who have never left Paris look well, but to me far from it, being martyrized by the hand of man, who has clipped them into stiff ovals. One is 407 years old. They produce no golden fruit, as their boxes are far too small to supply sufficient nourishment, and their fragrant blossoms are plucked to make orange-flower water. ”