Turn a navel orange over and the blossom end shows a small bump or opening, like a belly button: the tip of a second, undeveloped fruit folded inside the first. The orange carrying it is a seedless sweet orange, so every tree is grafted from budwood, and in California it ripens from November as the main winter eating orange.
California's navel industry grew from the Washington navel, a variety that arrived as two small trees delivered to Riverside in December 1873. One of those trees is still alive. In December 2025 it was carrying about 2,000 oranges.
What is the navel on a navel orange?
It is a fruit within the fruit. A 1984 study of Florida navels in the American Journal of Botany traced how it forms: a second ring of carpels starts inside the first when the flower bud is only 1.5 to 2.0 mm long. By the time the blossom opens, a complete miniature ovary is nested inside the main one. Both then grow on the same curve, with the inner fruit starting its growth spurt about two weeks later.
On some fruit the secondary fruit sometimes protrudes from the apex, in UC Riverside's description of the Washington navel. Slice any navel across its equator and you'll find it folded into the blossom end.
Why navel oranges have no seeds
Both halves of the flower are sterile. UC Riverside records that the Washington navel produces no viable pollen and that its ovules don't function either, so there is nothing to fertilize and nothing to fertilize with. A navel tree can't even pollinate its neighbors.
That shapes how navels are grown. With no seed to plant, every navel tree is budded: a bud cut from an existing navel is grafted onto a seedling rootstock. The U.S. consul in Bahia, Brazil, made the same point in an 1871 letter to Washington, now in the National Archives: the navel orange "contains no seed and for transplanting, the cuttings of the tree must be used."
From Bahia to Riverside
The story is often garbled, so the dates here come from the state landmark record and from a history of the tree on UC Cooperative Extension's Topics in Subtropics blog, which draws on Riverside's historians and the National Archives.
The USDA received 12 budded trees from Bahia in 1870, the year on the landmark plaque, though the consul's letters suggest the shipment may have come in 1871. William Saunders, superintendent of the USDA's gardens, propagated them in greenhouses in Washington, D.C. Most of his budded trees went to Florida, where they did poorly. Two were sent west to Eliza Tibbets, and according to historian Esther Klotz they arrived on December 10, 1873, after Luther and Eliza Tibbets drove 65 miles by buckboard to fetch them.
The Riverside trees thrived. By 1879 navels were taking first prize at the town's first citrus fair, and demand for budwood ran so high that a fence went up around the two trees to stop people stealing cuttings. UC Riverside's variety page says that within a decade or two the Washington was the leading variety.
Both parents were later moved. One was replanted on April 23, 1902, in a small park at Magnolia and Arlington Avenues. The other went into the courtyard of what is now the Mission Inn on May 8, 1903, with President Theodore Roosevelt helping; it declined from 1919 and was reported dead and removed in December 1922. The survivor became California Historical Landmark No. 20 on June 1, 1932.
The parent tree today
The Magnolia and Arlington tree still fruits, though it nearly died a century ago. By about 1915 to 1920 it was yellowing and declining, its lower trunk girdled by gummosis, a Phytophthora disease that left lesions on the bark. UC scientists saved it by inarching, grafting young rootstock seedlings into the old trunk to give it new roots: seedlings of sweet orange, rough lemon, sour orange in 1918, and of Troyer citrange and trifoliate orange in 1951.
When the San Bernardino Sun visited at harvest in December 2025, a UC Riverside research scientist confirmed a rough count of about 2,000 oranges on the 150-year-old tree. The Citrus Variety Collection keeps a Washington navel propagated from it.
The industry the tree started is still large. USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service puts California's 2026–27 navel crop, Cara Cara and blood oranges included, at 84.0 million cartons from about 109,000 bearing acres in its initial forecast.
Choosing and storing navels
Weight is the most useful test in a crowded bin. UC ANR Publication 8199, Oranges: Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy, advises a navel that is firm and heavy for its size, with fine-textured skin and no soft spots or bruises. It also says to ignore the light scars left where a young fruit rubbed against a branch; they don't reach the flesh.
Keep them cold. UC's garden guidance gives picked oranges about 4 to 6 weeks in the refrigerator, and a navel won't get any sweeter once it's picked.
What navels are best for
Peeling and eating one fresh comes first. Navels are seedless, and UC Riverside notes the rind is easily peeled.
Peel is the second use. UC ANR points out that the thick peel of a navel dries better than the thin peel of a Valencia, so dried zest for baking should start with navels.
Juice is the weak spot. Limonin, a very bitter compound, runs higher in navels than in other oranges, and UC ANR notes that freezing develops it. Press navels only for juice you'll drink the same day, and don't freeze them whole or as juice.
Marmalade suits them well. Ours uses navels from the Redlands slopes, and the Navel Orange Marmalade tastes of the orange with notes of honey and warm spice over a soft peel. For the scent without the fruit, our Navel Orange Essential Oil is made for diffusers and properly diluted home goods, never for eating. The varieties grown alongside navels are covered in our guide to California's specialty citrus, and the citrus collection holds the fruit behind each jar.
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash.
