Oranges

For years, one of Hong Kong's claims to uniqueness has been its prodigious appetite for cellular phones, Mercedes-Benz autos and Sunkist oranges. The statistics insist that the average Hong Kong resident consumes a whopping 64 pounds of oranges a year, nearly four times as much as an American. But that is one of Hong Kong's little secrets: As many as 40% of those oranges--about $30 million worth--aren't consumed here at all. They find their way across the border into China, where U.S.

Tyler Fisher has a simple breakfast ritual. Toast with butter. A glass of orange juice and no coffee. He's then prepared to face the 60 to 100 miles of daily driving that comes with his job. The Costa Mesa resident is used to paying high prices to fuel his car. Now he's paying more to fuel himself -- with orange juice. The average retail price of orange juice -- from fresh to frozen -- has increased in each of the last six months. As of Feb. 17, it was $5.

With the golden fruit that gave Orange County its name rapidly disappearing from the landscape, historians and government leaders have time and again suggested saving some of the remaining groves for future generations. But that effort largely has failed, the victim of limited public money, a seemingly boundless demand for housing and the dicey nature of orange farming. Meanwhile, scattered remnants of the area's once-mighty citrus industry continue to dwindle.

Nearly a third of all the remaining orange groves in the county are being removed this year, in what some fear could be the beginning of the end for the once-bountiful crop that gave Orange County its name. As much as 1,000 acres of aging orange trees in and around Irvine could be cut down over the next few months, reducing the amount of county land used for growing oranges from 3,021 acres to about 2,000 acres, officials said.

The rotund, early ripening Hamlins and the yellowish, elongated Pineapples have all been picked. Soon it will be the Valencias' turn, and Mason G. Smoak plucks one of the smooth-skinned fruit from the tree and opens it with a serrated knife to see if it's ready. The orange, which gleams in the morning sun, is gorged with juice, and droplets explode into the air as Smoak cuts into the rind.

It's been a punishing year for most California orange growers. But you'd never know it by checking out the produce aisle. Although prices paid to farmers for this season's big crop of navel oranges have plunged, supermarket prices in many cases have jumped, outpacing even last year when a freeze wiped out two-thirds of the crop.

The bronze plaque tells the tale: "The most valuable fruit introduction yet made by the United States Department of Agriculture." And there, at Magnolia and Arlington avenues in Riverside, stands the last of California's original Washington navel orange trees, enclosed by an iron fence, looming over the plaque in the summer sun.

Like a proud vintner, I have just sampled my first press, or perhaps I should say my first squeeze because we're talking juice here, orange juice, the best you ever tasted, a mixture of Valencia, mandarin and blood oranges. I had such a concoction -- and my first taste of blood orange -- at a roadside stand alongside Highway 111 on the way to Palm Springs many years ago.

First it was the sugar beet, once Ventura County's dominant crop but now little more than a footnote in agricultural lore. Then came walnuts, lima beans and the Moorpark apricot, all agricultural mainstays until markets dried up and those crops withered away.

The sun is drying away the morning haze in Woodland Hills, giving itself a clear view of Ann Bothwell's bit of living history. It's burnishing the dark green leaves of the 1,987 trees and settling in the pores of the hard infant fruit. Thus begins another day in what is believed to be the last commercial orange grove in the San Fernando Valley. Two-thirds of a century ago, citrus groves covered 15,000 acres of the Valley.