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Description:

It is the consensus of Florida horticulturists that the Murcott Mandarin variety is a tangor of unknown origin resulting from the breeding program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to Robert Willard Hodgson in Horticultural Varieties of Citrus, ‘ The oldest known budded tree, from which the present commercial acreage largely if not entirely traces, still remains on the place formerly owned by a nurseryman, Charles Murcott Smith, in Bayview, Clearwater, Florida, and is thought to have been budded about 1922 (Ziegler and Wolfe, 1961).


It is believed that the budwood was obtained from a neighbor, R. D. Hoyt of Safety Harbor, who was a cooperator in the citrus breeding program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which maintained a nursery of citrus hybrids at Little River, Miami, until about 1916. Evidently the parent tree was one of the hybrids which Mr. Hoyt received from the Department of Agriculture nursery at Miami sometime prior to 1916. Unfortunately, records are not available concerning this transaction or the labels for the trees provided.


Under the name Honey Murcott, small-scale commercial propagation was undertaken in 1928. The first commercial planting, which brought this variety to prominence and is largely responsible for its present popularity, seems to have been that of J. Ward Smith (no relation to C. Murcott Smith), near Brooksville in 1944, who first marketed the fruit under the name Smith tangerine, apparently unaware that it had already been named.’ During the past decade, Murcott has been planted rather extensively in Florida. Typical of ‘ common mandarins’ , Murcotts have thin rind, but is readily peelable. The rind surface is smooth to slightly pebbled and the color is yellowish-orange at maturity. High sugar content combined with good acid level results in intense, rich flavor.