I heard it said that a ripe orange dies not have an orange skin. The orange color is induced by man’s intervention. Is this correct? If true, sounds like someone’s going to awful lot of trouble!
I’ve heard the same thing. It seems that some oranges are oranger than others – juice oranges (the sort that are generally used to make commercial OJ) tend to be green with some yellow and orange. Other breeds are more colorful of skin – I’m sure that some are this way naturally, while some have been bred to the color, and still others might be dyed through some process during/after growing.
Any citrus mavens have better data?
–Da Cap’n
“Playin’ solitaire 'til dawn
With a deck of fifty-one.”
My parents send me a box of Florida oranges for Xmas every year. There’s one on my desk right now. According to a card put in with the oranges, if the winter is harsh the oranges will put more energy into skin pigmentation and will be more orange. If the winter is mild less energy will go to pigment and more to raising the sugar content of the fruit, which makes for a sweeter orange. True? I dunno but it sounds good and the oranges taste just fine. I have noticed that the more orange the skin is the thicker it is.
All the oranges I’ve seen on backyard trees here in southern CA are orange when they are ripe.
All the oranges in Viet Nam are green, but the sweetness is comparable to the orange oranges we have here.
Strangely, they still call them oranges (cam) over there.
All the oranges on backyard trees in NorCal worth eating, although not to SoCal specs, are orange.
Ray (Are all those Orangemen in N. Ireland actually really green?)
I guess there could be different varieties. I wonder if the same is true with other citrus fruits: lemons, limes, comquots(sp?)
and so on
Oranges don’t necessarily turn orange when ripe. It’s not uncommon for them to have some green yet be fully ripe.
However, since people think that oranges have to be orange, growers sometimes take ripe but green oranges, remove the natural color, and dye them orange. In the supermarkets, all oranges are completely orange, but when you get them directly from Florida, they often have green patches.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
Here’s a site with some info on oranges: http://www2.dominionfertility.com/annex/library/cic/X0037_freshfr.txt.html
It says some oranges are artificially colored. I grew up in a northern state and all of the oranges I can remember were a bright orange color. In southern states where oranges are produced they don’t seem to color them as often. The bright orange oranges are always uniformly orange and they are waxed to make them shiny. Even oranges that are orange when ripe don’t have that same intense orange that the dyed ones do.
Is the flesh also orange? Perhaps the name derives from the flesh color rather than the skin.
Any cooks have any information on how commercial dyes affect the flavor of orange zest?
no recipes, sorry.
but just like tree leaves, all fruit and veggies, have pigmentation which usually decreases with sunlight, allowing the second(if there is one) colour to start being used for energy.
when a tree-not an evergreen-goes through stages, green=spring/summer, the chlorophil inside the leaves is the first to get used up,
then in fall, leaves start to either yellow, orange, or red depending on the type of tree, this next colour is dependant on the type of chemical pigmentation that the tree naturally has. sorry I can’t remember the rest of the pigments 
but the same thing with oranges, orange is usually beta-karoteen(sp I know) hense why when you eat too many carrots your skin colour can take on an orangey tinge(you’d have to eat a whole lot of carrots)
all apples have chlorophil= why they’re green before they’re ripe, but some apples only have chlorophil=why they’re always green(Granny Smiths) and then most have a second pigmentation which turns them red with sunlight.
that’s my take
have a great day everyone
I am a fire whose flames lick and spit at the boundless sky forever desiring wonderous consummation
-me
Then again, some oranges go past orange. These are the best!
From http://www.starkpack.com/varchrt.htm :
Another link is http://www.comevisit.com/chuckali/citrus/citrusg2.htm .
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”