Clementines
Globes of gold on my breakfast table
in a blue bowl beside a plate of toast,
their thin rinds pierced by a thumb nail,
I tear them easily to find the sweet slices
of fruit, inhaling the tang of citric acid.
Hello to a day of sunlight, biting cold,
the satisfaction of a warm home
and opportunity to write about delight
on a winter morning. I wish everyone could
start their day with such simple satisfaction.
in a blue bowl beside a plate of toast,
their thin rinds pierced by a thumb nail,
I tear them easily to find the sweet slices
of fruit, inhaling the tang of citric acid.
Hello to a day of sunlight, biting cold,
the satisfaction of a warm home
and opportunity to write about delight
on a winter morning. I wish everyone could
start their day with such simple satisfaction.
Clementines & Knife -- John M. Murphy
A clementine is a tangor, a spontaneous hybrid between a willowleaf mandarin orange (Citrus deliciosa) and a sweet orange (Citrus sinensis). Seedless and easy to peel, it is typically juicy and sweet, with less acid than an orange. In 1892 Vital Rodier (Brother Marie-Clément) made grafts from an uncultivated tree that had grown among some thorn bushes in the 20-hectare orchard of an orphanage operated by the Brothers of the Annunciation at Misserghin in Algérie, about 15 mies southwest of Oran; the resultant fruit was originally called a mandarinette but at the urging of the orphanage was formally named the clementine by Charles Louis Trabut, the chairman of the Horticultural Society of Algeria, in 1902, 2 years before Rodier's death. As early as 1909 it was grown at the Citrus Research Center (now part of the University of California, Riverside) and introduced into California commercial agriculture 5 years later. The fruit became a major export product in the Palestine mandate after Shmuel Scheinerman (the father of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon) introduced it at the moshav Kfar Malal.
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