Uncut, a Cara Cara looks like any other navel, with plain orange rind and a small navel, so the sign or sticker is the only clue to the pink-to-salmon flesh inside. It is a navel orange, a 1976 mutation of the Washington navel found in Venezuela, colored by lycopene and ripe in California from November to January.
Lycopene is a carotenoid, in the same family as beta carotene. In a Cara Cara it colors the flesh and not the rind, so nothing on the outside of the fruit gives it away.
Where the Cara Cara came from
The variety arose as a mutation of a Washington navel and turned up in 1976 on a Venezuelan estate, the Hacienda Cara Cara, according to UC Riverside's citrus variety collection. From there it went to Florida's budwood program and on to California, where the collection received budwood in 1988 and calls the variety "well adapted".
Two notes from the years before release survive in that record. A 1989 report from Florida compared its flesh color to Star Ruby grapefruit, one of the darkest red grapefruits grown. And a citrus scientist warned in 1988 that the Cara Cara is a chimera that could revert to ordinary orange flesh if the wrong bud were picked for propagation, and the collection's notes advise against releasing budwood from trees that had not yet fruited. Rarely, a tree throws a twig of variegated leaves, and fruit from that twig can come out with a striped rind.
Everything else about the tree follows its parent: "Most tree and fruit characteristics reflect its Washington navel orange ancestry."
Cara Cara, navel and blood orange side by side
All three are sweet oranges, Citrus sinensis, and all three ripen in the California winter. The difference is the pigment, and where it shows.
| Washington navel | Cara Cara | Moro blood orange | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin | Bud sport, probably from a Selecta orange near Bahia, Brazil | Bud mutation of Washington navel, Venezuela, 1976 | Sicily, thought to descend from Sanguinello Moscato |
| Flesh | Deep orange | Pink to salmon-red, from lycopene | Red to almost violet-red, from anthocyanin (the pigment in purple grapes) |
| Rind | Orange, easy to peel | Plain orange, no blush | Orange, often blushed burgundy |
| Seeds | None | Usually none, a few at times | Few or none |
| Ripe at Riverside | November–January | November–January | December–February |
Sources: UC Riverside's pages for the Washington navel, Cara Cara and Moro.
Growing region matters most for the blood orange. The Moro colors most deeply in warm inland districts, and in coastal Southern California its rind stays orange though the flesh still reddens. Cara Caras sampled from the Coachella Valley desert in November 1999 were still graded dark pink inside. Other unusual fruit from the state's groves turns up in our post on specialty citrus in California.
What does a Cara Cara orange taste like?
It depends on the month. The collection tested Cara Caras from three California sites between 1996 and 2000, and early-season and midwinter samples differed sharply in the ratio of sugar to acid, the number growers use for sweetness:
- Early-November samples (1998): ratios of 7.0 to 8.8, with acid at 1.1–1.3%.
- January samples (1998): ratios of 16.6 to 18.7, with acid down to 0.6–0.7%.
So a November Cara Cara can taste tart, and a January one carries roughly twice the sugar for its acid. If the first ones of the season disappoint, try again after the holidays.
Seeds are rare but not impossible. Most samples held none, though a few ten-fruit lots from Riverside carried 13 to 24 seeds between them.
When are Cara Caras in season?
Ripe Cara Caras hang on the Riverside trees from November into January, the same weeks as the Washington navel. USDA counts it with the state's navel crop: the 2026–27 forecast of 84.0 million cartons counts Cara Caras and blood oranges in with the conventional fruit.
Choosing, storing and serving them
Pick a Cara Cara the way you'd pick any navel: firm, heavy in the hand, with smooth, fine skin, and no soft patches or bruises, per UC ANR's guide to storing oranges. Light surface scars from branch rubbing don't matter. At home it goes in the refrigerator crisper; commercial handlers hold oranges at 38–48°F (3–9°C).
For marmalade, our winter orange jar is Navel Orange Marmalade, from the Cara Cara's parent variety, and the rest of the fruit we work with is in the citrus collection.
The pink flesh is the reason to buy a Cara Cara, so serve it where the color shows: peeled rounds across a salad or a cheese plate, or segments spooned over yogurt.
Photo by mdreza jalali on Unsplash.
