ORANGE TREE

ORANGE TREE

1.- CHARACTERISTICS:

Orange trees:

• Are evergreen and flowering trees.
• Produce tasty fruits.
• Live between 50 and 150 years.
• Grow all most 20 feet tall.
• Have a compact and erect shape.
• Love full sunshine and moist soil.
• Their ideal temperature is between 55 to 100 degrees during the growing seasons.  and 35 to 50 during the dormancy.
• Can produce pink flowers.

2.- ORANGE TREE PARTS:

• Leaves: Its leaves are persistent and have a surrounding crown from 5 to 15 cm of length.
• Flowers: Its flowers smells quite well. Have an scented whitish on a short corner, solitary or in clusters of flowers pocs. Orange trees begin forming flower buds in early winter until spring. Near 99 percent of these flowers fall off without ever resulting in the formation of a fruit.
• Fruits: Are globose, of six to nine centimeters in diameter, with slightly rough bark.
• Roots: Its roots are deeply sunk on earth.
• Branches: Its branches are open wide, regular shaped and woody.
• Trunk: Orange trees have one solely trunk, with cylinder shape and green colour  at first, becoming grey later.

3.- REPRODUCTION

• The most common agents to pollinate orange trees are insects, quite often bees. Drawn to the sweet-smelling blossoms, insects use to enter the flower and unwillingly transfer pollen from one bloom or plant to another. Gusts of wind help to pollinate orange trees as well: Wind blow pollen grains from of blooms, that in the end fall inside the orange tree flower.

• Pollination for citrus trees generally happens when their flowers start to bloom. This use to happen from early winter throughout late spring. Once pollinated, it can take from five to eighteen months to produce viable fruit and ready to be harvested. Most citrus fruit can be left on the tree for large periods of time after being fully grown without the danger of over-ripening.

4- FUN FACTS

• Orange tree comes from southern China and was brought to Europe by the portuguese.
• In Spain, it is very abundant in Valencia, which is a major producer and exporter of high quality oranges.
• The orange is the symbol of seduction. The tradition says that white flowers of the orange tree are the symbol of purity, so it is common to see orange blossoms on bride's bouquets.