florida travel and tourist guidenorth floridaflorida panhandlecentral florida visitor information - tampa, st petersburg, sarasotacontact information

About FloridaHotels and ResortsAttractionsArt and EntertainmentDiningShoppingReal EstateVisitor InformationCalendar of EventsReturn to Home Page

Featured Websites

Southwest Florida

Miami Florida

Key West and the Florida Keys

South Beach

florida everglades

florida visitor and tourist information
Florida Travel and Tourist Information

All About Florida Oranges And Grapefruits

( Originally Published Mid 1930's )

The orange and grapefruit are the backbone of Florida's agriculture. Florida has been growing oranges for close on to four centuries, ever since the early days of the Spanish occupation. But it was not until after Florida had come through the long period of social and economic instability which characterized its turbulent history down to the end of the war between the states, three hundred years after its conquest by the Spaniards, that the rest of the country found Florida oranges available.

The orange, prior to 1870, was a rare, highly prized and expensive luxury which few residents of the regions north of 30 degrees latitude had ever seen, much less tasted. New York and Boston imported a few oranges for Christmas delicacies from Spain and North Africa, and occasionally an adventurous traveler returning from Florida would bring a few oranges north with him, as a rare treat for his family and friends. The grapefruit, in that pre-General Grant era, was practically unknown in the North, almost unknown in Florida, where it was introduced from the West Indies probably some time around 1870, and was popularly known as the shaddock, in more polite circles by the classier name of pomelo. How and when the name grapefruit, obviously derived from the fact that it grows on its tree in clusters somewhat faintly resembling bunches of grapes, became fastened upon this delicious fruit nobody knows. And nobody could have dreamed, in 1870, that in 1937 more than 62,000 railway carloads, 30,000,000 boxes, of Florida oranges, grapefruit, tangerines and limes would be shipped out of Florida and distributed to consumers in all but four of the states of the Union. California, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona were the only places in the United States which did not buy any. The rest of the country paid Florida close to $100,000,000 for the product of her 340,000 acres of citrus groves. Small wonder that Florida celebrated the semi-centennial of its state Horticultural Society with a pageant, "Golden Harvest," at Ocala in the Spring of 1937!

Citrus is by all odds the most important source of income in Florida, next to tourists. Oranges predominate by about two to one over grapefruit.

While it costs up to $400 an acre to cultivate, irrigate, fertilize, harvest, pack and ship the citrus fruit crop, the general experience is that a net average profit of $200 or a little more per acre can be realized from both oranges and grapefruit, averaging the cash returns over a period of years.

It may cost anywhere from $600 to $1200 an acre to buy and clear a good piece of citrus land, set out the grove and develop it to the point where income begins-four years in the case of grapefruit, five years for oranges-and the full yield is not likely to be reached before the tenth year. But unless all Florida experiences such a general freeze as almost ruined the youthful citrus industry in the Winter of 1894-95 the growing of oranges and grapefruit seems to offer about as profitable an investment as any operation which depends upon the vagaries of the weather can be. At least, a great many thousand people who have, among them, been intelligent enough or lucky enough to accumulate some $300,000,000, have invested that huge sum in Florida orange groves and are taking down an annual net income, over any five-year average, of 20 percent or more on their investment.

When it is considered that probably half or more of these investors in Florida orange and grapefruit groves spend little or no time personally in Florida and do not have to master the technique nor engage in the drudgery which successful farming anywhere in the North calls for, it is submitted that the risk of an occasional crop loss from frost is not too hazardous in view of the profits in good years.

Florida is learning from California, where frost is a far more imminent menace, ways of keeping its groves warm on the rare occasions when the thermometer drops toward the danger point of 28 degrees. It does not take much of a fire to raise the temperature of an orange grove several degrees. Along the rows of most citrus groves one notes piles of cordwood ready to be fired; pine is a cheaper fuel even than oil in Florida.

Although Florida has not had a killing frost of any wide extent since 1931-32, experiments have been made with airplane protection against frost, the theory being that the circu lation of air immediately above the trees, by the propellers of a plane flying low, will keep a freezing frost from forming on the foliage and fruit. Not enough practical experience with this method has been reported to enable anyone to vouch for its validity. It is an example, however, of the prevalent adventurous and experimental temperament of the Florida farmer.

The Florida citrus industry, though antedating by centuries that of California, was for years operating under self-imposed handicaps from which the California growers, early in their industry's history, freed themselves. These handicaps had their origin in the individualistic tendencies and habits of Florida orange growers and their comparative isolation, one from another, scattered as Florida groves are over a territory many times as large as the California orange district and each locality dependent upon transportation and shipping facilities entirely different from those available to the growers in other districts.

When the English-speaking settlers in Florida began their horticultural experiments with the original sour orange of the Spanish stock they had no common standard of excellence nor, indeed, any common knowledge that others were at work on the same problem as themselves. There was no central clearing house of information, no scientific background for their exeriments and, since modern transportation facilities and the vastness of present day markets were still undreamed of secrets hidden behind the veil of the future, there was no individual or common purpose of producing an orange which would mature early or late as might be desired by the ultimate consumer, that would not only please the palate but the buyer's eye, that would stand shipment over long distances after being ripened on the tree-in other words, a commercial orange.

California, starting its orange industry practically from scratch, with Florida's centuries of experience and experiment behind it and backed by men who had learned about orange cultivation in Florida, established those objectives almost from the start, shrewdly brought the state's entire production to fixed commercial standards, and at the same time organized the marketing of California oranges through a central agency which established effective control of distribution from tree to consumer, enabling California to promote its orange business by nation-wide advertising in the certainty that the demand so created could be supplied by any corner grocer anywhere in the United States. Thus arose a condition under which the superior Florida orange was left behind in the race for the markets of the East, although it had a 2,500-mile advantage over California in the matter of distance.

In short, while Florida continued to grow oranges as it had done from the beginning, primarily to eat at home or to please the individual tastes of its own growers and their neigh bors, California began where Florida left off and established its citrus industry as a commercial business from the beginning, concentrating unitedly upon two or three varieties selected, not to please anyone in particular but to suit the average person who had never had experience with Florida oranges.

As recently as 1925 there were 156 distinct varieties of Florida oranges competing with each other in the markets of the North, and there were 132 separate and distinct sales agen cies and organizations struggling with each other for advantage in those markets in the distribution of Florida citrus fruits. Nobody at the growing end could have any certainty, under those conditions, that his crop was going to be sold at a price that would cover his costs, if sold at all. And no consumer who preferred Florida oranges to California's could be sure of getting them. If the consumer did find Florida oranges in the market there was no assurance of their quality. They might have been picked green, and often were. They might have been picked fully ripe and still look green, for some varieties of Florida oranges have a curious trick of losing their yellow color after picking, although they have been ripened on the tree.

Under conditions like that every grower, every shipper and every distributor was a law unto himself; but after repeated failures to get together on a cooperative program for mutual benefit, in 1925 the State Government took the first step to establish standards of quality to which Florida oranges and grapefruit must conform before they could be shipped out of the state. Throughout the next ten years the activity of the Citrus Inspection Bureau was confined to field inspections, to determine whether the fruit on the trees was ripe enough to pick and ship. These inspections began on September 1 and ended November 30, by which time, it was assumed, there would be no more unripe fruit on the trees. Still California oranges continued to dominate the nation's markets, and still a great deal of the fruit shipped from Florida was either actually unripe or appeared to be.

Nevertheless, the economic conditions of the Florida citrus industry did continue to improve. Something like 150,000 acres of groves which had been planted as large scale commercial enterprises in the early and middle 1920's began to come into full bearing, and as these new plantings had been limited to the varieties which the experience of California and Florida alike had proved were best adapted to the demands of the market, their growers were able, by adopting marketing practices taken from California's book, to bring a degree of order out of the chaos which had handicapped the whole Florida industry.

They were still, however, in competition inside their own state with growers who persisted in evading the law by shipping green fruit, and there was still insufficient cooperation among the growers generally to insure anything like orderly distribution. California, in these ten years, was not only making the American public orange-conscious, but convincing it that California oranges were the best oranges, while Texas was coming into the market strongly with its own grapefruit, having organized that industry from its beginning on the systematic cooperative lines of the California orange industry.

By the end of ten years of experience with a moderate degree of citrus control, the Florida growers were ready for more control. The legislature of 1935, acting upon the demand of the growers themselves, enacted laws creating a Citrus Commission, with power to enforce compulsory inspection and grading of all oranges, grapefruit and tangerines offered for shipment, to set up new and better standards for maturity tests, the bonding and licensing of all handlers of citrus fruit, the regulation of shippers' charges, the guaranteeing of growers' costs under certain stipulated conditions, the registration of brands or marks and the regulation of the use of coloring material.

On about two out of every three Florida oranges the buyer will see, stamped in capital letters, the words: "Color added." That does not mean that there has been an attempt to palm off unripe fruit for ripe fruit by painting it yellow. It means that under state and Federal laws it is permissible to "doll up" those varieties of oranges whose skins do not naturally take on, even when fully ripe, the bright yellow color which the California oranges and their advertising campaign have educated the public to regard as the sign of a perfect orange. California, in fact, adopted this practice of artificial coloring to bring its oranges up to a uniform standard of appearance before Florida ever tried it, and it still colors its fruit by the use of ethylene gas. Because of a peculiarity in the Federal law fruit colored with ethylene gas does not have to be stamped "color added." State inspectors see to it that only fully mature Florida oranges are subjected to coloring by the use of harmless dyes approved by the Federal Food and Drug Bureau. About 12,000,000 of the 20,000,000 boxes of oranges shipped in the 1936-37 season were so colored. Florida "color-added" oranges must pass a higher maturity test than is required for any other oranges, and they must also pass a special juice test.

Probably the most important provision of the Citrus Commission Act of 1935, next to the elevation and maintenance of standards, was the levying of an assessment on every box of citrus fruit shipped, to established a fund for an advertising program. One cent a box on oranges, three cents on grapefruit and five cents on tangerines, yielded an advertising fund from the 1936-37 season's shipments, of the order of $500,000. The effect of the advertising campaign initiated by the use of this fund in the shipping season of 1935-36 is largely responsible, Florida believes, for the increased demand and wider acceptance of Florida oranges and grapefruit by the consuming public, and for a very considerable extension of the market for tangerines, which had previously been confined mainly to the larger cities.

So beneficial did a single season's experience prove the operations of the Citrus Commission to be that the 1937 legislature not only reenacted the law but added amendments de signed to remedy defects which had developed in practice, notably one increasing the minimum bond for citrus handlers, a provision designed to eliminate irresponsible commission men, and another stepping up the maturity standards for grapefruit and color-added oranges.

The Florida Citrus Commission maintains headquarters at Lakeland, in Polk County, where are grown nearly a third of all Florida oranges and grapefruit. Headquarters of the Citrus Inspection Bureau are at Winter Haven. At the peak of the shipping season nearly 300 inspectors are engaged in testing fruit for maturity, and in certifying the grade and pack of each shipment. The citrus belt is divided into 15 inspection districts, each with its district supervisor and corps of inspectors, who number 226 for the entire state. In each district there are from 13 to 45 citrus packing houses, 325 in all, with about 400 bonded shippers handling the pack. Supervisors and inspectors are picked from men experienced in citrus handling and familiar with packing house operations. Before appointment every candidate for one of these jobs is required to attend a training school maintained by the Bureau and to pass an examination to demonstrate his thorough understanding of the citrus law and the Commission's regulations.

Besides the inspection in the field and at the packing houses, the state maintains 26 road guards. Their duty is to check up on every motor-truck passing along the highways with a load of citrus fruit and see that it carries proper papers authorizing the transportation of the load to a point outside the state. Every shipment, by rail, water or truck, must be accompanied by a state certificate that its contents have been inspected, graded and labeled in accordance with the Commission's regulations and the law, that the carrier is duly licensed and bonded and has been authorized to transport this particular shipment, for which a manifest has been filed. Unless armed with the necessary permits, the trucker who attempts to carry oranges outside of the state finds himself in trouble at the border with Federal inspectors from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, even if he has succeeded in slipping by the Commission's own highway patrol.

Very few "bootleg" oranges get out of Florida, but more than 3,000,000 boxes of the 1936-37 crop of oranges and grapefruit went by truck to 35 states and the District of Colum bia and even to Canada, which took 400 boxes of Florida tangerines, 800 boxes of oranges and 3,600 boxes of grapefruit by the highway route. Among the most frequent sights seen along Florida highways are signs and fingerboards inviting truckers to load up at nearby groves or packing houses. Most of the trucks which take Florida fruit and produce north carry it as return loads after delivering northern merchandise into the state.

These truckers are principally free-lance, driver-owned cars which operate all over the South, picking up loads of fruit and vegetables where they can get them and moving north ward as the crop seasons move. Many of them, however, are owned or chartered by national chain store systems, who utilize them to bring merchandise from northern factories and warehouses and to carry back for distribution through their northern stores the Florida citrus, particularly grapefruit. Trucks in the 1936-37 season carried Florida grapefruit as far west as Oklahoma.

One problem confronting Florida citrus growers every season, which neither legislation nor regulation short of arbitrary crop restrictions could control, was the problem created year after year by the presence or anticipation of a surplus production beyond the capacity of the market to absorb. These actual or anticipated surpluses, recurring at frequent intervals from season to season, had been for years an important factor in preventing anything like stabilization of prices and orderly marketing. Mere expectation of a bumper crop inevitably depressed prices and led to frantic dumping of fruit on the market for whatever it would bring, while the existence of an actual surplus spelled loss in the absence of any practical method of carrying the surplus over from one season to the next. Moreover, citrus fruit being a perishable crop which depreciates or spoils if exposed too long to the high temperature of Florida's climate, it was the necessary practise to rush the entire crop to market as soon as the fruit was picked, thus causing a succession of market gluts alternating with shortages, with the natural result of constantly fluctuating prices as the early crops, the middle-season pick and the late spring fruit followed each other.

These difficulties confronting Florida citrus growers have been so nearly overcome that it is not going too far into the realm of prophecy to predict that by 1940 they will have been entirely eliminated.

Three elements have combined to put the citrus industry of Florida on a stable economic basis. Perhaps the most important and far-reaching of these, certainly the one which seemed the most unlikely in 1925, is the invention, development and successful application of methods and processes for canning grapefruit pulp, grapefruit juice and orange juice so effectively that it will keep in the tins, at normal temperatures, so unchanged in flavor as to meet and stimulate a wide-spread popular demand for citrus products outside of the fresh citrus season.

Orange growers, chemists and cannery experts had been working for years on the problem of how to put up orange juice in tins so that it would not discolor or turn sour without being loaded with artificial preservatives which affected its taste. In 1925 an experimental cannery putting up grapefruit hearts was set up in Florida and met with some success, although it operated on the theory that its function was not so much to carry over surplus fruit from season to season as to utilize the culls, which for any reason were unfit for shipment as fresh fruit. It was not until 1932 that the researches of several independent experimenters finally demonstrated the practicality of the citrus canning project, and market tests indicated that the consuming public would buy canned citrus and citrus juice when it could not get the fresh fruit, provided the product was maintained at a uniform standard of the highest quality.

Immediately citrus canning plants, representing investments of millions of dollars, began to be set up in Florida. At the beginning of 1937-38 citrus season there were forty-three such plants in full commercial operation, constituting a new and highly important industry for the state, as well as providing an important stabilizer of market prices. These canning establishments, many of which are also equipped for the canning of Florida vegetables, buy the surplus grapefruit and oranges from fresh fruit shippers or direct from the growers at prices which usually advance steadily from the period of peak production in December, to the end of the season, in June.

Many Florida growers had become accustomed, in bumper crop years, to taking a loss on their December shipments, or at least realizing only a few pennies a box after deducting pack ing, shipping and transportation costs and brokers' commission. The canneries took off their hands all they were able to deliver in December, 1936, at from twenty-five to thirty cents a box. That price, low as it appears to be, was in effect net profit to the grower for a product from which he might well have obtained no revenue at all in the glutted Christmas-time market; and by withdrawing from that market a part of the crop, better prices were obtained for the proportion that was actually shipped. As the season progressed the cannery price for grapefruit increased from month to month until by April, 1937, it had reached $1.00 a box.

The total pack of Florida citrus products by the canneries of the entire state in the 1936-37 season was 7,475,128 cases of two dozen standard cans to a case. Nearly 3,500,000 cases of this pack consisted of grapefruit segments; more than 3,000,000 cases were grapefruit juice and another 300,000odd cases were broken segments of grapefruit.

The preponderance of grapefruit over oranges in the citrus canning industry is accounted for, in part, by the fact that production of grapefruit in Florida has increased in recent years faster than the marketing facilities and demands have increased, thus tending to create a surplus of greater proportions than in the case of oranges. Another and highly important reason is that the canning of grapefruit and grapefruit juice has been more successful in the palatability and consumer-acceptance of the canned product than in the case of orange juice. It is a comparatively simple process to can grapefruit so that the flavor of the tinned product is indistinguishable from that of the fresh fruit. The canning of orange juice has not yet reached that stage of perfection; even an uncritical palate usually is able to tell the difference between canned and fresh orange juice. However, several of the more progressive canners maintain staffs of research chemists who are steadily evolving improvements in processing methods, cooperating with the Federal Citrus Products Research Laboratory at Winter Haven, which was established in 1932 under the direction of Dr. Henry G. Knight, chief of the United States Bureau of Chemistry and Soils.

The major reason why canned orange juice "tastes different" is that, to prevent it from discoloring by oxidation, it has to be deprived of most of its oxygen content before the cans are sealed. Much of the missing oxygen, and with it the missing taste of fresh orange juice, can be restored by aerating the canned juice. This can be done either by stirring it briskly in an open bowl for a minute or so with an ordinary egg-beater, or by pouring it over an air-distance of a foot or more from one container to another, eight or ten times. As Dr. Knight has pointed out, it is easy enough to preserve orange juice by cooking it, but when you do that you destroy the ingredient which gives it its greatest popularity, next to its flavor, which is vitamin C. Also, you lose the flavor entirely. However, the market took more than 350,000 twenty-four can cases of canned orange juice, over 200,000 cases of mixed orange and grapefruit juice, and more than 75,000 cases of "citrus salad," broken segments of oranges and grapefruit canned together, in the season which ended in June, 1937.

By-products of the citrus canneries are also finding considerable markets. Of major importance is the oil extracted from orange peel, which has a market value of around $15 a pound, and is used by perfume manufacturers but principally by large wholesale bakeries and manufacturers of flavoring essences and soda fountain syrups, to impart an orange flavor to icings, ice cream and drinks.

The peels themselves, especially those of the grapefruit with the "rag" which remains after the pulp and juice have been extracted, are dried, ground to a meal, and are coming into wide use as a feed for dairy cattle and for fattening beef stock. Cattle are said to like this citrus feed very much and to thrive on it. Some dairymen reported complaints that when made of orange peel the citrus feed imparted an orange flavor to the milk of cows fed upon it, to which some milk consumers objected. One enterprising citrus canner began in 1937 experiments with a baby food put up in granular form like a breakfast cereal, prepared exclusively from orange peel. It is a highly palatable preparation not yet on the market as this is written, but is undergoing practical tests in several children's hospitals.

The second means whereby Florida is moving to eliminate future surpluses of citrus fruits, especially grapefruit, has already been referred to. This is direct distribution to consumers through the great grocery chain store groups.

When it became apparent, early in the 1936-37 season, that Florida was heading for a bumper crop of grapefruit, negotiations were opened, in which the Florida State Chamber of Commerce took the initiative, with the Citrus Commission and the Florida Citrus Exchange, the largest cooperative marketing organization in the state, cooperating with the National Association of Food Chains, comprising 130 organizations operating 37,000 retail groceries and markets in every one of the forty-eight states. Plans were developed for a "National Bumper Crop Grapefruit Sale" by the chain stores of the entire nation throughout January and February, 1937.

This was carried out so successfully that the menace of a crop nearly fifty percent greater than that of the previous year, which had created what the United States Department of Agriculture called "the nation's number one surplus problem," was converted into a veritable jubilee for Florida citrus growers. The chain stores put on a grapefruit advertising campaign, using 8,000 daily and weekly newspapers and radio, and backed this up with window displays, posters, handbills and other methods of promoting public interest in grapefruit, at the same time instructing their 150,000 store salesmen to urge grapefruit upon their 12,000,000 daily customers.

The direct result of this chain store drive on grapefruit was the shipment and sale in January and February, 1937, of nearly twice as many boxes of grapefruit as in the corresponding months of 1936, 4,229,640 boxes as against 2,194,056. The chain stores themselves increased their grapefruit sales by 275 percent, and introduced grapefruit into communities and whole regions where it had been almost completely unknown. The chain store people did not ask or receive any special discounts, but on the contrary bought their grapefruit at the prevailing daily market quotations, which rose consistently from January through to the end of the season, when they were practically double the price at the beginning of the chain store campaign.

A secondary result of this cooperation with Florida growers on the part of the national chain store organizations was to create in the minds of Florida folk who knew what was going on an entirely new and friendly attitude toward the chain stores. The public good will in Florida created by the realization that the chain stores, instead of being public enemies, as political demagogues picture them, were performing a vital public service in the rapid and economical distribution of commodities over wide areas, was the deciding factor in defeating, at the 1937 session of the legislature, measures designed to drive the chain stores out of Florida by taxing them beyond the limit of their ability to pay and still continue to render adequate service to consumers.

The third stabilizing element which has come into the Florida citrus picture since 1935 is the great extension of water transportation in the carrying of oranges and grapefruit and other Florida products to Northern markets. The excessive freight charges of the railroads leading from Florida to the North have long been a theme of bitter complaint by Florida shippers, especially those whose products had to be sold in competition with water-borne products from the Pacific coast, such as California oranges, which get the benefit of a competitive rail-water rate regardless of which route they choose. This discrimination was the motivating force back of the development of the new Florida ports of Fort Pierce, West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades). Fort Pierce, strategically situated within easy trucking distance of the entire citrus belt, ships almost as much citrus fruit as is shipped from anywhere else in Florida. Here, as in the other ports, are provided not only the pre-cooling stations necessary to bring oranges and grapefruit down to the temperature at which they will best stand shipment, but cold-storage warehouses in which boxes of fruit can be held awaiting shipment until market conditions and prices are favorable. Regular lines of refrigerated ships make scheduled trips several times a week in the citrus season between Fort Pierce and New York, to supply the Eastern market with a steady flow of fruit in prime condition. Most of the Indian River premium crop is shipped by this route.

The opening up of these new ports and water transportation systems has resulted, since 1935, in reducing the freight rate on citrus fruit from central and southern Florida points to New York, most of the benefit of the reduction going to the growers.

The quality and marketability of Florida citrus is steadily improving as the groves which have been planted since the middle 1920's, and devoted to the varieties most readily sal able, come into bearing and the older groves of the varieties which were grown, as it were, primarily as household pets, reflecting more the individual tastes of their owners than the commercial possibilities of their product, are being abandoned and replaced.

So far we have been talking about oranges (including tangerines) and grapefruit, which are what Florida thinks of first when one mentions citrus fruits. But two other citrus fruits are beginning to figure with increasing importance in the state's agricultural picture. These are Perrine lemons and Persian limes.

Florida has always grown lemons, which the Spaniards introduced at the same time they planted their orange trees. For a hundred years limes have been grown on the Keys and else where in the extreme southern part of the state. But neither has been a commercial crop of consequence in Florida until recent years. Indeed, until California obtained tariff protection for its lemon groves against the importations from Sicily, practically all of the lemons consumed in the United States were imported from the Mediterranean. Now most of the lemon consumption is supplied from California, with Florida just beginning to be a factor in this growing market. Florida still buys every year nearly $2,000,000 worth of lemons from California. For a number of years California had a plant quarantine against Florida grapefruit, and in retaliation Florida quarantined California lemons, buying its entire supply from Italy.

Wild lemons are common enough, like wild oranges, all over southern Florida. Their fruit is large, thick-skinned and almost juiceless. It is so rough that the generic term "rough lemon" is applied to these trees, cuttings or seedlings of which are highly regarded as a sturdy, frost-resisting stock upon which to graft both oranges and grapefruit.

The varieties of lemons which grew well in California and Italy were found unsuitable to the Florida climate and soil. After several years of experiment, however, by Dr. Walter T. Swingle and Dr. David Fairchild of the U. S. Bureau of Plant Industry, a new breed of lemon was developed by crossing the Sicilian lemon with the wild Mexican lime of the Florida Keys. The Mexican lime was brought to Florida in 1836 by Dr. Henry Perrine, and the new variety of lemon was named in his honor.

The Perrine lemon is a thin-skinned, juicy fruit with the full lemon flavor, which comes to maturity unblemished and free from disease. It is peculiarly immune to many of the para sites and blights against which other citrus fruit have to be protected. It absorbs more water and hence requires more irrigation than oranges or grapefruit, and offers a somewhat different problem of fertilization, but it bears fruit profusely and continuously throughout the year. On a lemon tree one may see buds, blossoms, young fruit and mature fruit all at one time at any season.

The profit in lemon growing in Florida, as reported by the owners of the still comparatively few groves of Perrine lemons, is materially larger per acre than it is with either oranges or grapefruit. Because the bark of the lemon tree is more tender than that of other fruits, and also because they are never dormant and the sap is circulating the year round, lemon groves are more susceptible to frost than oranges and grapefruit. The area in which they have been grown successfully so far, therefore, is limited to the sub-tropical regions south of Miami and the lower citrus belt in the Ridge section, where the hilly contour of the country provides effective air-drainage, and the presence of thousands of fresh water lakes tends to moderate winter temperatures. The largest Perrine lemon groves are located in the Ridge country, the best-known at Babson Park and DeSoto City.

The cultivation of the Perrine lemon and the Persian lime go hand-in-hand, frequently in the same groves, often on the same trees. Any variety of citrus fruit can be grafted on any other; it is not impossible, therefore, and occasionally is undertaken, more for amusement than for anything else, to grow oranges of several varieties, grapefruit, tangerines, lemons, limes and experimental hybrids of two or three of these fruit on a single tree. David C. Barrow of DeSoto City, the pioneer in practical development of the Perrine lemon, used a five acre grapefruit grove, whose trees were mainly of rough lemon stock, as the basis for his lemon grove. He substituted lemon buds for the grapefruit shoots in 1933, and in 1936 had a large and profitable crop of lemons; his 1937 lemon crop from these five acres was 2,000 boxes, which brought $3 a box net to the grower.

At the same time that he started his lemon grove Mr. Barrow budded another five acres of grapefruit stock to Persian limes. The large, thin-skinned Persian lime, whose green ish pulp contains nearly twice the juice content of the common West India lime, and whose flavor is considered by most folk more palatable, since it is free from the musty tang of the common variety, was introduced into Florida in 1897 from Tahiti, where it had in turn been brought from Persia. It has the same ever-bearing habit, requires precisely the same kind of cultivation and fertilization as the Perrine lemon, and is therefore a "natural" for the lemon grower. Mr. Barrow's thousand boxes of limes in 1937 were sold under contract at $6 a box, making a high return on five acres of grove.

Not enough Florida lemons and limes had been marketed up to the end of 1937 to figure in the statistical crop reports, but the demand for both fruits was greater than the supply. Foreseeing a steady growth for years to come in the American demand for lemons and limes, H. W. Bennett and his two sons, R. W. and T. W. Bennett, have established the largest lemon grove in Florida, 350 acres between Babson Park and Lake Wales. The Bennetts, like Mr. Barrow, have so far found this a highly profitable branch of the citrus industry; so much so, in fact, that they began in 1937 the extension of their groves to an ultimate thousand acres and the establishment of their own packing house and plant for canning or bottling lemon juice and lime juice.

It takes capital to establish a profitable citrus grove, and many investors who have been deterred from going into this fascinating field of Florida agriculture by the fear of over production and consequent unprofitable prices of oranges and grapefruit are studying the new lemon and lime branches of citrus horticulture. Initial costs are no higher, the time lag between the first grafting and profitable production is shorter, and at present and for some years to come in all probability the profits per acre are larger-always barring the possible accident of a destructive frost, which is one of the hazards which anyone must take in the effort to obtain more than ordinary normal interest on his money.