One holiday tradition that has prevailed for well over a century literally has its roots here in Southern California, beginning when a pair of trees imported from Brazil began yielding plump, sweet and healthful navel oranges that are even today Christmas stocking staples.

And nearly every navel orange grown or still growing in the valley that appeared on produce stands, fruit baskets or stockings is a direct descendant of those first oranges planted in 1875.

The tradition of giving oranges as gifts began nearly as soon as three orange trees were planted in 1875 in Riverside by longtime resident Eliza Tibbets, who nurtured the trees with dishwater.

Sweet, durable

Eliza, an early noted spiritualist and suffragette, received the cuttings of the orange tree from a friend in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) named William Saunders who imported from Bahia, Brazil. Earlier cuttings had been planted in Florida, but they failed.

While the Florida experiment went bust, two of the Riverside trees flourished and produced a sweet, durable, seedless winter fruit that could be easily packed and shipped at a time when few winter fruits traveled far beyond their source and the winter months provided the biggest demand for fresh produce, especially beyond Rocky Mountains.

Eliza and her husband, Luther, named the trees Washington Navels – Washington for the president and navel for the “belly button” at the blossom end of the fruit. However, the new miracle orange posed a problem. In grower’s terms, they were “clones” that produced neither seeds nor pollen. In short, the new Navel Orange trees were sterile.

Cuttings and sunshine

Saunders had already solved the problem of reproducing the trees by grafting cuttings or “sports” onto existing trees. He just needed the proper climate for them to grow – and dishwater and the California sunshine in Eliza Tibbets’ yard did the rest.

Within two years, Eliza began selling budding wood for $1 per twig, and Riverside growers grafted enough buds of Eliza’s trees to other trees to introduce Washington Navel oranges to the world. Within a decade, the fruit swept both the gold and silver medals at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial in New Orleans. By World War II, Southern California navel or ange groves occupied nearly 40,000 acres in San Bernardino County – roughly the size of Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, Montclair and Claremont combined.

While the success of the navel orange was the first step in transforming the region’s economy from wheat (then the region’s biggest agricultural import) and cattle to a citrus economy, it literally changed the face of the Inland Empire when citrus growers began building dams at two of the Santa Ana River’s key sources to divert water to local citrus growers. Where the river had once been the only river to run full time in Southern California, the citrus industry reduced it to an ephemeral.

Even today, though much of California’s produce is the Washington Navel orange, it still symbolizes California to the world – and nearly all of those oranges growing in the region today are Eliza’s children.