Many unsuspecting visitors to Tucson are delighted by the orange trees lining our city streets in abundance. Kate Crooks, Volunteer Manager at Iskashitaa Refugee Network, vividly remembers seeing them on her first day here: “I moved [to Tucson from Ohio], and the first free day I had, I went to walk around the University of Arizona campus. I was just amazed at the different landscape: palm trees, olive trees. And then I saw...an orange tree!”
Over the phone, Kate laughs. “So I got an orange off the tree, [thinking] ‘Wow, this is the best place ever.’ I was in full honeymoon phase.”
“And then I eat the orange, and I’m like “Oh. Oh, this is not ripe at all! This is so sour and bitter.’” Somewhat sheepishly, Kate tells me that she threw the fruit away, half-eaten. It was only after she began working at Iskashitaa that she realized: “The orange...was, in fact, ripe. It was just a Seville Orange.”
Seville oranges are cut and ready for juicing and processing into the many possible delicacies little know to Tucsonans (cookies, sorbet, pound cake, tabouli, or stuffed grape leaves). Photo Credit: Alaa Alani.
When he first arrived from Iraq, Alaa Alani was also immediately struck by the abundant orange trees in Tucson. Unlike Kate, he knew exactly what they were: naranj, the Arabic word for sour orange. In his words (edited for clarity): “In the first month I come to the USA, I am very happy to see big tree for sour oranges (naranj) near my house. I knock on the door. Old woman open...I [ask] her can I take some [oranges] from the tree. She tell me: ‘You can take it all, but you must know: this is poison.’”
“Poison orange.” Here in Southern Arizona, the Seville orange, a.k.a sour, ornamental, and fake orange, has taken on that unfortunate nickname. For a long time, sour oranges were the only type of orange the world knew, having originated in southeastern Asia independently from the sweet orange. Calling the fruit naranj, derived from a Sanskrit word, nāraṅga, Arabian merchants introduced the sour orange to Europe and the Mediterranean. (An intriguing quirk: in Arabic, the word for sweet orange is burtuqāl, a transliteration of the word “Portugal,” in recognition of the Portugese traders who brought the sweet orange to Europe in the late 15th century). The first record of sour oranges in the Americas dates to 1493, when Christopher Columbus reportedly planted orange seeds on the island of Hispaniola.
Sour orange trees thrived in the moist, tropical climate of the Caribbean. In North America, Spaniards planted sour orange groves to commercially export the fruit to England. Eventually, with the introduction of the sweet orange, hardy sour orange rootstock became the widespread base for sweet orange trees, a practice that continues to this day for sweet oranges and many other tree crops. Here in Southwest Arizona, sour orange trees are a legacy of our citrus-producing past, as well as a widespread aesthetic decision.
“Every year I make juice for one year and put it in the freezer to be used every day“ - Alaa Alani
“I didn’t realize until I started volunteering at Iskashitaa that people were calling them ‘poison oranges,’ and all that,” explained Dr. Janet Griffitts, a research archeologist and Seville-enthusiast. Many years ago, when she came to the University of Arizona, Dr. Griffitts tried one of the sour oranges littering the UA’s campus, and it awoke “a delicious flavor memory from way, way back to when I was a scrawny, perpetually hungry nine-year-old.” She recalled tasting the unique sour tang on a family trip to Turkey when she was a child. Since rediscovering that flavor, Dr. Griffitts has been compiling a recipe book featuring Seville oranges, so she can “reintroduce people” to the fruit. Because, according to her, “at the beginning of the century [in the U.S], there are plenty of recipes [that use Seville oranges.] Up to the 1930’s or so. But then...we stopped using them.”
Why did we stop using sour oranges? And how can we reintroduce ourselves to the fruit littering our city streets? For the past decade, much of Iskashitaa’s work has been centered on answering those two questions. Through monthly educational edible tree tours at the Tucson Botanical Garden or University of Arizona campus, weekly harvests teaching hundreds of volunteers about the local food system, or selling artisanal Justice Jams (yes, they’re as cool as they sound) online, Iskashitaa’s staff, long-time volunteers, and refugee chefs are working to educate all who walk through its doors on the delights of the Seville. It wasn’t always this way, however. Just like everybody else, Iskashitaa’s staff needed to be educated on the joys of a juicy sour orange.
Dr. Barbara Eiswerth, Executive Director of Iskashitaa, remembers how “people would call and say, ‘We have Seville oranges. Are you interested?’” Barbara would sigh and respond “as soon as we get all of the tangerines, all of the Meyer lemons, and all of the navel oranges harvested, we’ll think about Seville oranges.”
The visible difference between a sour orange (left) and a smooth skinned sweet orange (right). Stress brought on by drought causes irregular cell division in the sour orange, leading to its characteristic bumpiness.
Only when Iskashitaa began to systematically map the fruit trees in certain neighborhoods did its volunteers take a closer look at the Seville. In Barbara’s words, “We were working with the Ha:sañ Native American School...to harvest Seville orange.” Using the kitchen at the school, volunteers tested out ways to make the sour orange less, well, sour: “We tried everything! We added ginger ale, we added soda water, we added white sugar, brown sugar—we did everything we could to make Seville orange-ade palatable. And it was a struggle!” After all that experimenting, Barbara and her team weren’t left with anything anyone would willingly drink in abundance. Later, refusing to let all the sour oranges go to waste, Barbara turned to Iskashitaa’s refugee-volunteers, hoping they would have some ideas for how to use Seville oranges.
Faeza, one of Iskashitaa’s experts on cultural food preservation, remembers things a little differently. She grew up using the juice of what she called Iraq’s “famous lemon” to season food. When she came to the United States, missing that taste of home, she started searching for naranj. She couldn’t find it in the grocery store, but all of a sudden, she noticed “the trees, a lot of them.” But when she excitedly shared this with her family, Feaza remembers her daughter warning her: “‘Mama, it’s dangerous. Nobody can touch the tree.’ I say, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘Mama, police can take you! This is not Iraq.’ I say, “I want one.’ She say, ‘No, Mom, don’t touch it, please.’”
Thus, for several years after arriving from Iraq, Faeza recalls how “I can’t find [naranj] anywhere, and I can’t get [any]. After that, when I work with Iskashitaa, one day, we go to harvest for another fruit. We see one tree and I say, ‘Barbara, this is naranj! What are we going to do with this?’ She says, ‘[This is] poison orange!’ ‘What?!’ I say. She say, ‘Yes, Americans say this is poison orange or sour orange.’ I say, ‘No Barbara, this is so good.’ She say, ‘Are you sure?’I say ‘Yes.’ And after that we tried many things...jam, marmalade, juice or naranj-ade,” as well as candied rind and many savory dishes from Iraq.
Iskashitaa is now trying to find a way to stop the landfill dumping of tons and tons of Sevilles so we can share with the more than 47,331 Iraqi refugees resettled in the USA. Want to help contact the Barbara, the IRN Director at eiswerth@iskashitaa.org.
Faeza and Barbara would go on to host many panel discussions on local foods and food waste and demonstrations about how to use Seville orange juice in jams, hummus, and, Faeza’s personal favorite, tabouleh, a fresh salad of parsley, tomatoes, and mint, seasoned with olive oil and sour orange juice. In Barbara’s words: Sometimes, “it takes a refugee.”
As refugee-volunteers like Faeza have shown us, sour oranges have a long and rich tradition around the world. Despite this, they continue to be ignored, misunderstood, or just plain reviled here. My own experience with sour oranges illuminates this dynamic.
A few years ago, on my daily drive to school, I’d pass by a certain apartment complex. Even from the road, I could tell that the place was lined with dozens of orange trees. Being the enthusiastic Iskashitaa volunteer that I am, I found the email of the property manager of the complex and reached out to him, offering to get together a group of volunteers to pick all the citrus.
Towns all over Southern Arizona once lined their streets with Seville orange trees for their delightful orange blossom scent in the spring and their picturesque orange fruit that decorated the tree for months on end. Unfortunately, the townspeople have forgotten how to use these versatile fruit and tons are harvested and trucked to the landfills each year.
Although friendly in his initial response, he told me that the oranges were sour, and, consequently, it didn’t make sense for us to pick them. I replied with examples of how sour oranges are used in Middle Eastern cuisine, but he never responded. For the next month, every day when I drove to school, I watched a sad and slow change overcome the beautiful grove as the oranges dropped to the ground, only to lie rotting in great piles. I couldn’t help but ask myself: “What if I had gotten the chance to explain? To tell him about Alaa, a longtime Iskashitaa volunteer and Iraq native, who drinks a cup of sour orange juice every single day? Would he still think the oranges were useless?” But most of all, I asked myself: “How can we get people to understand, so that this painful waste doesn’t happen any more?”
This waste is happening on a massive scale, all over Arizona. But recently, Iskashitaa Refugee Network has been given a unique chance to combat it.
One small city just outside of Phoenix is known for its “magnificent palm and orange trees,” which date from early developers' plan to turn the land into citrus groves. This plan did not work out, and the area eventually became a cotton farm. And yet, the city’s original legacy lives on in the hundreds of orange trees planted around the city. Guess which type of orange they are?
The secret ingredient of Tabouli at Tucson’s Sinbad’s restaurant is sour orange juice, not lemon, according to Sinbad’s Iraqi American owner.
According to Dr. Barbara Eiswerth, every year, the city pays for the removal of 150,000 pounds of sour oranges from its streets. These massive truckloads of oranges are taken straight to the landfill. Recently, the city reached out to Iskashitaa, offering to donate the fruit.
The efforts of dozens of volunteers and staff have led Iskashitaa to this moment, as we prepare to launch a massive campaign to Save Our Sevilles. Iskashitaa is sending out a call for volunteers and idea-makers to help process 75 tons of sour oranges. With your donations, Iskashitaa can make and sell orange marmalade and deliver the citrus to refugee communities across the nation.
The next time you go outside, look at a blooming sour orange tree, resplendent with its dark green leaves, and see not a waste, but a valuable and tasty citrus—this is the only way that, collectively, we can Save Our Sevilles.
This publication made possible by the Arizona Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.