Oranges

citrus fruit of the orange tree

Oranges — specifically, the sweet orange — is a citrus tree and its fruit. The tree is a small flowering tree growing to about 3 meters tall. The orange fruit is a hesperidium, a type of berry.

Oranges originated in Southeast Asia and were cultivated in China by 2500 BC. The fruit of Citrus sinensis is called sweet orange to distinguish it from Citrus aurantium, the bitter orange. The name is thought to ultimately derive from the Sanskrit for the orange tree, with its final form developing after passing through numerous intermediate languages.

Quotes

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The orange is ripe
the sun-filled orange is ripe
  • And she feeds you tea and oranges
    That come all the way from China.
    And just when you mean to tell her
    That you have no love to give her
    Then she gets you on her wavelength
    And she lets the river answer
    That you've always been her lover.
  • The orange is ripe
    the sun-filled orange is ripe
    • Bei Dao, "The Orange Is Ripe", in The August Sleepwalker, trans. Bonnie S. McDougall (New York: New Directions, 1990), p. 56
  • It is even in
    prose, I am a real poet. My poem
    is finished and I haven't mentioned
    orange yet It's twelve poems, I call
    it oranges.
  • If you are the basket of oranges
    I am the knife of the sun.
    • Octavio Paz, 'Motion Translated by Eliot Weinberger, from COLLECTED POEMS 1957-1987.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 572.

  • The happy bells shall ring Marguerite;
    The summer birds shall sing Marguerite;
    You smile but you shall wear
    Orange blossoms in your hair, Marguerite.
  • Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen blühen,
    Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glūhn,
    Ein sanfter Wind om blauen Himmel webt
    Die Myrtle still und hoch der Lorbeer steht?
    Kennst du es wohl?
    Dahin! Dahin,
    Möcht' ich mit dir, O mein Geliebter, ziehn.
    • Knowest thou the land where the lemon-trees flourish, where amid the shadowed leaves the golden oranges glisten, — a gentle zephyr breathes from the blue heavens, the myrtle is motionless, and the laurel rises high? Dost thou know it well? Thither, thither, fain would I fly with thee, O my beloved!
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister, Mignon's Lied.
  • Yes, sing the song of the orange-tree,
    With its leaves of velvet green:
    With its luscious fruit of sunset hue,
    The fairest that ever were seen;
    The grape may have its bacchanal verse,
    To praise the fig we are free;
    But homage I pay to the queen of all,
    The glorious orange-tree.
  • 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!
  • 'Twas noon; and every orange bud
    Hung languid o'er the crystal flood,
    Faint as the lids of maiden eyes
    Beneath a lover's burning sighs!
  • Beneath some orange-trees,
    Whose fruit and blossoms in the breeze
    Were wantoning together free,
    Like age at play with infancy.
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