Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 82, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1919 — FIRST OF SEEDLESS ORANGES [ARTICLE]

FIRST OF SEEDLESS ORANGES

Fruit That la Now 80 Much Prized Waa Brought to This Country From Brazil. In 1872 United States consul to Bahia (Brazil), W. F. Judson, was told by the natives that 60 miles Inland, up the Amazon, were native orange trees bearing fruit without seeds. Accordingly he sent natives after tree shoots and some of the fruit. The shoots were packed in moss and clay and sent to Washington. They were set out by the agricultural department, but attracted little attention until tht next year, when Horatio Tibbetts of Riverside, Cal.,, took the surviving four shoots to his home and planted them. One died and another was eaten up by a cow. At the end of five years the two surviving trees bore 10 handsome seedless oranges. Next year the oranges were even better, and the trees bore about a box of the fruit? From that time on the cultivation of the seedless oranges about Riverside progressed rapidly. As there were no seeds to raise the trees from It was founds necessary to graft buds of the seedless trees into seedling trees. Riverside has grown from a small village to a town of 15,000 acres devoted*to the cultivation of navel oranges. It is the greatest orange producing locality in the world. The two original trees were fenced about and carefully guarded lest harm should come to t(yun, and they are now enjoying a green old age.