Field guide · Winter (Med)

Orange

Laranja is Arabic, naranj, and it first named the bitter orange the Moors planted in Iberia, the one Seville still boils into marmalade. The sweet orange came later, on Portuguese ships from the East around 1500, and the eastern Mediterranean named it after the people who brought it: Greek portokali, Turkish portakal, Romanian portocală. Greek still keeps both words, nerantzi for the bitter one and portokali for the sweet. Nine in ten Portuguese oranges grow in the Algarve. A green patch on the skin is not unripe; colour needs cold nights, sweetness does not. Simplest thing to do with it: eat it in the morning, because laranja de manhã é ouro.

Noted 2026-10-28