Oranges

Everybody loves oranges. They are sweet and juicy. They are in sections so it is easy to eat them. Some oranges do not any seeds. Some have a thick skin and some 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. The Chinese started to raise orange trees around 2400 B.C. Chinese art has lovely old pictures of oranges and orange trees. 

Farmers in other parts of Asia and the Middle East learned to raise oranges from the Chinese. Then they taught Europeans. The Spanish planted orange trees in the New World (North and South America). They took them to Florida first. Oranges are a very important crop in Florida to day. In England "Orange" is both a fruit and a color. We use the name of the fruit for the color.