educate the uneducated..

[xuechengfeng]

this may be a horrible question because french fries have nothing to do with france, but are mandarin oranges a chinese xport?

[Alleluia]

I found this somewhere: "mandarin orange" possibly comes from the colour of the fruit resembling the colour of the Chinese officials' yellow robes in the late 18th century. Don't know whether to trust that or not. The word mandarin (meaning Chinese official) comes from Portuguese (16th century), and to Portuguese it came from Hindi.

BTW, I think oranges originally come from China anyway, or from Asia at least. In Finnish and Swedish the word for orange means "Chinese apple".

[chengdude]

Mandarin oranges are usually called "tangerines" in the States and growers of the Clementine variety there have built up their status, attractively boxing them as an annual gourmet treat/event and calling them simply "clementines."

Rather dated, here's an excerpt from Google's No. 1 hit for "mandarin orange:"

Origin and Distribution

The mandarin orange is considered a native of south-eastern Asia and the Philippines. It is most abundantly grown in Japan, southern China, India, and the East Indies, and is esteemed for home consumption in Australia. It gravitated to the western world by small steps taken by individuals interested in certain cultivars. Therefore, the history of its spread can be roughly traced in the chronology of separate introductions. Two varieties from Canton were taken to England in 1805. They were adopted into cultivation in the Mediterranean area and, by 1850, were well established in Italy. Sometime between 1840 and 1850, the 'Willow-leaf' or 'China Mandarin' was imported by the Italian Consul and planted at the Consulate in New Orleans. It was carried from there to Florida and later reached California. The 'Owari' Satsuma arrived from Japan, first in 1876 and next in 1878, and nearly a million budded trees from 1908 to 1911 for planting in the Gulf States. Six fruits of the 'King' mandarin were sent from Saigon in 1882 to a Dr. Magee at Riverside, California. The latter sent 2 seedlings to Winter Park, Florida. Seeds of the 'Oneco' mandarin were obtained from India by the nurseryman, P.W. Reasoner, in 1888. In 1892 or 1893, 2 fruits of 'Ponkan' were sent from China to J.C. Barrington of McMeskin, Florida, and seedlings from there were distributed and led to commercial propagation.

The commercial cultivation of mandarin oranges in the United States has developed mostly in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi and, to a lesser extent, in Texas, Georgia and California. Mexico has overproduced tangerines, resulting in low market value and cessation of plantings. The 1971-72 crop was 170,000 MT, of which, 8,600 MT were exported to the United States and lesser amounts to East Germany, Canada and Argentina. There is limited culture in Guatemala and some other areas of tropical America. These fruits have never been as popular in western countries as they are in the Orient. Coorg, a mountainous region of the Western Ghats, in India, is famous for its mandarin oranges. For commercial exploitation, mandarins have several disadvantages: the fruit has poor holding capacity on the tree, the peel is tender and therefore the fruits do not stand shipping well, and the tree has a tendency toward alternate bearing.