NOT so long ago, we called them tangerines, they came from Florida and when we thought of them at all -- which wasn't very often -- it was mainly because they were so easy to peel. Certainly it wasn't for their flavor, which was pretty uniformly undistinguished.
Not anymore. Walk through a Southern California farmers market this winter and it almost seems there are more locally grown tangerines -- properly called mandarins -- than there are navel oranges.
Sold under their variety names, Satsumas, Clementines, Pixies and at least half a dozen others, they come in a kaleidoscope of shapes, sizes and colors. And the flavor is mouth-filling, explosively sweet and tart at the same time, with individual varieties ringing notes that range from flowery to almost winy.
This is just the beginning. California is in the midst of a gold rush, as a crop that only a few years ago represented less than 5% of the state's citrus harvest becomes one of the big four -- trailing only navel and Valencia oranges and lemons.
Although they're a relatively new addition to the California scene, mandarins (\o7Citrus reticulata\f7) are hardly newcomers to the world of citrus. In fact, they are among the three original families, along with pummelos and citrons. Every other kind of citrus fruit -- oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit and all the rest -- are hybrids resulting from cross-breeding among these three groups.
The popular name tangerine is a commercial invention that was attached in the mid-19th century because the first mandarins imported into the U.S. were shipped from the Moroccan seaport of Tangiers. So unfamiliar were these fruits that they were sometimes sold under the name "mandarin orange," a usage that today continues mainly in the canned version.
To make it even more confusing, some of the fruits we consider mandarins are actually hybrids -- crosses between mandarins and other citrus, sometimes quite complex. There is, in fact, a mandarin-orange cross called the tangor.
Generally speaking, mandarins are easy to peel, and easy to separate into segments. Beyond these characteristics, the family is highly varied. Botanists divide mandarins into as many as 35 types, according to things such as point of origin, leaf shape and color.
