How many years does it generally take for an orange tree sapling to bear fruit?

At the mention of oranges, surely everyone is familiar with them, and will also think of Shimen oranges. So how many years does it take for an orange tree sapling to bear fruit?

1. How many years does it take for an orange tree sapling to bear fruit?

It takes about 2-3 years for an orange tree sapling to go from planting to bearing fruit, but if it is not managed properly, it may take a while longer before it bears fruit. By around 5 years it enters the full fruiting period, and its economic lifespan reaches 40-50 years.

2. What kinds of oranges are there?

1. Sugar mandarin

Sugar mandarin, also known as October mandarin, is a kind of fruit. The peel is orange-yellow and glossy, thin and easy to peel, covered with small sandy dots, and feels rather rough to the touch. The fruit is flat and round, with a raised lump at the top and a sunken navel at the stem end. The flesh is ruddy in color, with no white membrane, crisp and juicy, tasting fresh and sweet, and it also has fewer seeds. Lipu County in Guangxi is currently the county with the largest area planted to sugar mandarins in the country.

True sugar mandarins are small and fairly uniform in size. The surface is not too smooth, with one small pit next to another. In taste, they are fresh, honeyed and sweet, pleasant and sweet, with no residue. Honey mandarins and sugar mandarins look the most alike, and their sizes are about the same, but they can still be told apart. Honey mandarins have a relatively smooth surface, and of course the most important thing is the taste. The taste of honey mandarins is different from the fresh sweetness of sugar mandarins; it is heavier, even with a slight medicinal note, and leaves more residue when eaten.

2. Wogan

Wogan is a late-ripening hybrid citrus variety, derived from a cross between “Temple” tangor and “Dancy” tangerine. In production, sweet orange, tangerine, trifoliate orange, or citrange can be used as rootstock, but because there is graft incompatibility with citrumelo, it should be avoided.

3. Gonggan

Gonggan is a natural hybrid of orange and mandarin, with the double advantages of both orange and mandarin, and is known as the “King of Chinese mandarins.” The fruit is beautiful in shape, golden in color, thin-skinned with few seeds, crisp and residue-free in flesh, fresh, sweet and honeyed, high in sugar and low in acid, and rich in flavor. It combines the beautiful appearance of oranges with the delicate, easy-to-peel flesh of mandarins, which other citrus varieties find hard to match, and it is praised as the emperor of citrus. Gonggan is also called “Emperor Mandarin” or “Imperial Concubine Orange.” The imperial court listed it as a tribute for the emperor's personal use, hence the name “Gonggan.” It is said to be a fruit that Wu Zetian extremely loved.

4. Murcott

Murcott is a hybrid of mandarin and sweet orange, that is, a tangor, bred in 1913 by W.T. Swingle and others at the Miami Agricultural Experiment Station in Florida, USA. In the 1970s, Professor Lin Pu of the Department of Horticulture at National Taiwan University introduced this variety to northern Taiwan for trial planting. Because Murcott has high sugar content, a rich and excellent flavor, thin skin and abundant juice, and ripens later than Ponkan, its price on the Taiwan market is much higher than that of Ponkan, and the cultivated area has increased year by year. In recent years, trial plantings have also been introduced in southern Fujian.

Murcott has the advantages of a good production period, good quality, high yield, a flat and smooth appearance, and tolerance for storage and transport. It is one of the excellent citrus varieties for fresh eating with sustainable development potential, but it also has the disadvantages of being prone to fruit cracking and having more sunburned fruit, so special precautions must be taken against such problems in cultivation.

5. Mashui mandarin

Produced in Mashui Town, Yangchun City, Guangdong, it is a traditional famous fruit of Yangchun City, Guangdong. With its beautiful shape, brilliant color, thin peel, melting flesh, few seeds, abundant juice, and fresh, sweet fragrance, it clears heat and moistens the lungs, and promotes urination to remove dampness. It is deeply loved by people at home and abroad, and is called one of the four famous mandarins of Guangdong, and is renowned in the Hong Kong, China and Macao, China markets. It is a small honey mandarin fruit with high sugar and low acid. It is easy to grow and manage, sets fruit early and yields well. The fruit is flat and round, moderate in size, with an average single-fruit weight of 40-60 grams. The peel is orange-yellow, the flesh is orange-yellow, and the texture is tender and melting.

6. Honey mandarin

Nanfeng honey mandarin is one of the excellent varieties of ancient Chinese citrus, and is a precious specialty of Jiangxi Province. Historically, it has been famous at home and abroad for its golden fruit color, thin peel and tender flesh, residue-free eating, rich sweetness, and striking fragrance. Nanfeng honey mandarin has the reputation of “tribute mandarin,” and was once praised by Stalin as the “king of mandarins.” Through the constant changes of the times, the Qincheng honey mandarin currently produced in Shishan Baofang, Qincheng Town, Nanfeng, is listed as the only place of origin of tribute honey mandarin.