How Often Do Florida Oranges Bloom?

Orange Blooming Period

• Oranges normally come into their flowering period once the lower temperatures of the winter months begin to give way to warmer temperatures of spring. Usually flowering coincides with the first flush of leaves in the spring. This typically happens sometime in March, or whenever the first spring rains occur. Flowering lasts from two to four weeks. Although rare, in years when summer brings unusually severe dry weather, a second smaller flush of flowers can appear on trees following a replenishing, saturating rainfall.

Orange Blossom Characteristics

• Highly sought after in Victorian times for bridal wedding crowns and bouquets, orange flowers are extremely fragrant. Usually borne on the tree in clusters of one to six flowers, the 2-inch-wide flowers are creamy white, with a cluster of up to 25 prominent central stamens surrounded by five flared, reflexed petals. Honeybees love the flowers and produce a mild-flavored honey from orange blossom pollen.

From Flowers to Fruit

• The flowering period signals it is near an end when the flowers begin to shrivel and turn brown, after which the orange fruits begin to develop. Normally, orange trees produce many more flowers than they do fruits; not every orange blossom will mature into a harvestable orange. Oranges have a relatively long ripening requirement, from May through December to March, the period over which the fruits are harvested. Normal spring flowering of orange trees often begins for the new year's crop while last year's oranges are still waiting to be harvested from the tree.

Orange Tree Maturity

• Most oranges grown in orchards today are produced by grafting a seedling onto an established rootstock of a different citrus species, which affords the tree additional defense against disease as well as spurs the tree into earlier flowering and fruiting. Trees grown from seed can have a juvenile period that lasts anywhere from three to 15 years, whereas grafted orange trees typically begin flowering and producing a harvestable crop within three or four years. Another characteristic of many oranges is a biennial crop, where fruit is produced from a flowering branch only every other year. Oranges need warm growing conditions such as those found from U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 9 through 11, the reason the plant thrives only in Florida, Arizona and Southern California, as well as areas of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.