ORANGES

Everybody loves oranges. They are sweet and juicy. They are in sections, that is, separate parts, so it is easy to eat them. Some oranges do not have any seeds, i.e. parts which grow into a new part. Some have a thick skin but others have a thin skin.The orange tree is beautiful. It has a lot of shiny green leaves. The small white flowers smell very sweet. An orange tree has flowers and fruit at the same time.There were orange trees twenty million years ago. The oranges were very small, not like the ones today. The orange tree probably came from China. Many different kinds of wild oranges grow there today. In other words, these oranges grow in nature. The Chinese started to raise, or grow, orange trees around 2400 B.C.; Chinese art has lovely old pictures of oranges and orange trees. Farmers in other parts of Asia , such as India and Pakistan, and the Middle East, learned to raise oranges from the Chinese. Then they taught the Europeans. The Spanish planted orange trees in North and South America, called the New World . They took them to Florida first. Oranges are a very important crop (farm product) in Florida today. "Orange" is both a fruit and a colour. The colour of oranges is very beautiful. Therefore, in English we use the name of the fruit for the colour.