| Spanish missionaries introduced citrus to California in 1769. But in 1873 a missionary in Bahia, Brazil came across a sweet, nearly seedless orange and sent samples of the tree to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. An employee, William Saunders, shipped two small Bahia trees to Eliza Tibbets, a friend living in Riverside, California. The Bahia orange was renamed the Washington Navel for its 'belly button' base. Explore customer favorites from Thanos's line-up. Thousands of acres of navel orange tree were propagated from the bud wood of those two trees. |