Navel oranges, also known as winter oranges, have a characteristic that can help you tell them apart from other oranges. It is the feature that gives navel oranges their name: the navel! The navel orange actually grows a second “twin” fruit opposite its stem. The second fruit remains underdeveloped, but from the outside, it resembles a human navel—hence the name. They’re seedless, peel easily, and are thought to be one of the world’s best-tasting oranges.

The appearance of a navel on the orange is the result of a mutation which created a conjoined twin — an aborted second orange which looks like a human navel. The navel orange is a mutation of regular sweet orange. The original mutated orange was discovered in a monastery orchard in Brazil in 1820 by a Presbyterian missionary. It intrigued him that not only did the orange have a belly button AND a baby orange inside — but it was very sweet, and had no seeds. He made a cutting, propagated some little trees, and sent them to the the United States. Because the original navel orange with that mutation is seedless, all of the navel oranges that we see and eat today are genetically identical to the original orange.

The Parent Navel Orange Tree is a tree grown by Eliza Tibbets in Riverside, California, in 1873. The Riverside County tree was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.20) on June 1, 1932, and can be seen to this day at the corner of Magnolia Street and Arlington Street, Riverside, California. (https://goo.gl/maps/AChYgo5x7kbdAwqFA)

That's right, your produce aisle is filled with clones, each with an undeveloped conjoined twin that is genetically idential to an orange from Bahia, Brazil that mutated in the 1820's to resemble a disgusting human belly button. Yum!

These oranges are marked half off for quick sale. I wonder why?