Mandarin orange

Mandarin (Citrus reticulata )

Mandarin (Citrus reticulata ) refers to both a citrus plant from the family of Rutaceae and the orange fruit thereof.

Origin

The origin of the mandarins is suspected in northeast India or south-western China.

The plants are cultivated in China for several thousand years, the first reliable mention dates to the 12th century BC. From the region of origin in which the mandarins over Southeast Asia and India spread. To the first millennium AD, the mandarin was already cultivated in many southern prefectures of Japan. The first tangerines that have been introduced to Europe, came in 1805 with Sir Abraham Hume from Canton / China to England ( " Canton orange "). From one of these first two types of the " Mediterranean " Tangerine has later developed.

About the origin of the name is no uniform view in the literature. Some reasons for the name is that the mandarins in China as the most valuable citrus and more than the other as the fruit of the rich was considered, named after the Mandarin, a Chinese high government officials.

Mandarin Similar

Clementines and satsumas are seedless citrus fruits that have arisen as hybrids between orange and tangerine. They are both botanically as well as warenkundlich distinguished from the mandarin. There are also Minneola, a cross between a tangerine and grapefruit. Also in Orange is a cross between the mandarin, with grapefruit.

Description

Tangerines are the most adjustable and largest group of Citrus plants affects what fruit shape, size, taste the fruit, and habit of the plants. They are small, evergreen trees in the rule. The branches are occupied by only a few, small thorns. The leaves are lanceolate, tapering on both sides. The petiole is only dimly deducted from the leaf blade, the wing on the petiole are only visible as a thin line. The leaf edges are notched indistinct.

The flowers appear singly or in few-flowered inflorescences in the leaf axils. The sepals are fused, the five white petals free. The 20 to 25 stamens are fused into multiple groups with each other. The style is long and narrow.

The fruits ( Hesperidien ) Mandarin are much smaller than oranges, they taste less acidic than the orange and have a distinctive intense, complex aroma on. Your skin can be compared to other citrus peel easily, and they can also be very easy to dry from the outside segments divide, so you can peel them and eat with your fingers. Each fruit consists of about nine segments, which are filled with orange juice sacs. Each segment is surrounded by a thin membrane ( endocarp ), the whole fruit of a two-part shell. The inner layer of the shell is white ( mesocarp, albedo ), the outer orange when ripe ( exocarp, flavedo ). The white layer is reduced at maturity on a network of fibers, it is the scientific name " reticulata " = refers reticulate. The seeds are oval, round at one end, tapered at the other. Inside, they are green. A large part of the seed is polyembryonisch.

Use

Food

Mandarins are harvested mainly in autumn and usually arrive in the months from October to January in the fruit shops and departments in the sale. Otherwise, peeled and sugared Mandarin honeycomb is obtained throughout the year than canned goods. Extracts of tangerines are very commonly used in soft drinks. In juice bars and supermarkets also pure mandarin juice is offered.

Peeled tangerines

Tangerines are often consumed in husked form of cans. Contrary to many assumptions, the shell of each fruit columns will not be hand or mechanically removed, but etched in a bath of dilute hydrochloric acid ( HCl). This one-hour procedure is safe, as it mimics the digestive process of the human stomach, in which hydrochloric acid is also included. After the skin has come off of the individual wedges of orange after another involving sodium hydroxide, they are rinsed with water, and, filled with a sugar solution which has the same sugar content as the mandarins in cans.

Essential Mandarin oil

Mandarin oil is obtained by cold pressing the peel. For the production of a milliliter of the shells of 2 to 3 kg fruit is required. A distinction is made, the green and the red mandarin oil, each of which has its own scent characteristics. The harsher green mandarin oil is obtained from the unripe, the sweeter red mandarin oil from the ripe fruit. Both consist of about 85-95 % monoterpenes, monoterpenols, aldehydes and esters.

Since Mandarin oil is obtained by cold pressing, you should pay attention to a natural quality when buying essential tangerine oil. The oil glands of the mandarin namely sitting in the shell and are usually excessively loaded with pesticides and fungicides, which pass through the pressure in the extracted essential oil.