The History of Oranges — How a Fruit Invented a Colour

For 1,000 years, English had no word for the colour orange. Then a sour fruit from the Himalayas changed the language forever. This is the full history of oranges. It starts with a wild citrus in the foothills of the Himalayas and ends on your breakfast table. Along the way you'll learn how a pomelo and a mandarin created the sweet orange, how the word "orange" travelled from Sanskrit to English and lost a letter to a grammar mistake, and how the fruit finally gave a name to the colour (or "color") Chaucer couldn't describe. We follow the orange through Moorish Spain, Vasco da Gama's voyage, Louis XIV's giant orangery at Versailles, James Lind's scurvy experiment, and the freak mutation in Brazil that means every navel orange you've ever eaten is a clone. 0:00 The Colour With No Name 1:18 Born in the Himalayas 2:52 The Fruit That Never Grew Wild 4:42 How the Word "Orange" Was Born 6:47 The Moors Bring Oranges to Europe 9:08 Vasco da Gama & the Sweet Orange 11:37 How a Fruit Named a Colour 14:14 Louis XIV's Orange Obsession 16:42 Scurvy & the Cure Nobody Used 18:32 The Freak Branch: Navel Oranges 20:22 Orange Juice & the Modern World Subscribe for weekly deep dives into the hidden history of the food we eat. #FoodHistory #Oranges #HistoryDocumentary