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We have orange trees that have always produced "orange flesh" oranges. This year a few of the oranges have red streaks in them. Is is possible that this year the flowers were crossed with a blood orange tree?

Niall C.
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2 Answers2

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This has nothing to do with what pollinated your trees this year.

But apparently some of your trees have a trace of blood oranges in their ancestral line. Oranges (Citrus x sinensis) are a hybrid between pomelo and mandarin and all citrus are rather prone to hybridization and mutations.

So why do you suddenly see red streaks?

I blame the weather. Did you have cool nights and warm days lately?
To develop the deeper colours, oranges need a certain temperature gradient which causes "blond" oranges to turn from greenish to orange and blood oranges to develop their crimson colours. In very warm weather, oranges ripen, but stay paler. (See my answer on Seasoned Advice for more details.)

Community
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Stephie
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Update: This answer is wrong and doesn't help anybody. Although at first I have deleted it, I now have decided to undelete it so that I just have a reminder on the long journey that awaits me on this site. For every upvote (+10 points) I will need 5 downvotes (-2 points each) in order not to unethically increase my rep on a wrong answer, so please be careful and do NOT upvote it. Thanks!

Old answer: Yes, it is possible. Blood oranges are a variety of the orange ones, Citrus × sinensis. Plants in the Citrus genus (like oranges, pomelo, tangerins, mandarins and others) are well known for their ability to produce hybrids. For the crossing to occur, some blood orange trees need to be nearby.

Alina
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  • Alina sweetie, you are so kind! There's nothing wrong with making a mistake, and I'm 100% sure you're not trying to gain rep you don't deserve! I had upvoted this, and I just undid that. As of now, it's at zero. It looks like I may have been the only upvote (though I might be wrong.) That means at the most you gained 8 points you feel that you don't deserve. I don't think anyone will downvote now that you've edited it. In fact, I hope they don't. You're just trying to learn, and you did the right thing. Give yourself a break, and remember how much you help people! – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL Jan 21 '17 at 00:19
  • @Sue done. Also retracted my downvote. – Stephie Jan 21 '17 at 08:01
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    Well, I just figured that newcomers will be less intimidated by the perfection of the site if they see that everybody makes mistakes. I have read that deleted answers are still visible for users with high rep, so why not help the low rep ones leave aside their insecurities? I'll keep this wrong answer here so that new users seeing it would know they are not alone. We can't be allknowing from the beginning and I hope this will inspire people to be bolder. – Alina Jan 21 '17 at 13:42