The lack of enough sun in the moderate climates is the reason for its orange color. In tropical weather its color is not even orange but green, even when it is ripe.
The orange tree does not grow in the wild but is a cultivated hybrid between pomelo and mandarin. At least 4 millennia BC, the orange was cultivated there before being taken to India. The orange originated in Southeast Asia, on the territory of Ancient China. Instead, the term comes from a transliteration of the Sanskrit “naranga”, which comes from the Tamil “naru”, which means “fragrant”. Based on that, the Greek botanical name of citruses is “Hesperidoeidē”, and the word “πορτοκάλι”, which they use for the fruit, as we do in Bulgaria, originates from the country of Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula, close to which the tree was growing in antiquity.Ĭontrary to what most of us think, in English this fruit was not named for its color – orange. But going back to the apples, according to later interpretations of the legend, it was decided that the “golden apple” given to Hera by Gaia on her wedding to Zeus, was actually an orange tree. That is why the rocks at the European and African sides of the Gibraltar Strait bear his name – the Pillars of Hercules (Hercules is the Roman name of Heracles). Instead of climbing over the Atlas Mountains, Heracles, thanks to his superhuman strength, just passed through it, thus connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. His last labor was to bring three golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, which was at the westernmost end of the world, at the border with the Atlantic. According to the ancient Greek legend, the unusually strong son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, had to carry out 12 “heroic labors” by order of Eurystheus, to whom he was sent in service by the jealous Hera.
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