Murcott (fruit)

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Citrus x nobilis 'W. Murcott' - Tangor.jpg
Citrus x nobilis 'W. Murcott', in the Linnean House of the Missouri Botanical Garden
Hybrid parentageParents unknown; likely a tangor[1]
Marketing names'Honey tangerine'
A ripe Murcott fruit

The Murcott (marketed as Honey Tangerine) is a tangor, or mandarinsweet orange hybrid.[1][2][3]

The Murcott arose out of citrus pioneer Walter Tennyson Swingle's attempts to produce novel citrus hybrids. Its seed parent has been identified as the King tangelo; the pollen parent remains to be identified.[4] About 1913, he gave a hybrid tree he had produced at a US Department of Agriculture planting to R. D. Hoyt at Safety Harbor, Florida. Hoyt in turn gave budwood to his nephew, Charles Murcott Smith, for whom the variety would be named. Smith was growing the resulting trees in 1922 at his nursery in Bayview, Pinellas County, Florida, now a neighborhood in Clearwater.[1][5]

The trees grow upright, but often have branches bent or broken by heavy fruiting at the ends.[1]

It is widely grown in Florida, where it matures in January to March. Citrus scab and alternaria fungus disease attack Murcotts.[1]

The Murcott is one parent of the Clementine-like hybrid variously called the Afourer, Nadorcott or W. Murcott cultivar, the other parent being unknown.[3][6]


  1. ^ a b c d e "Murcott (Honey Tangerine)". 2018-05-09.
  2. ^ Velasco, Riccardo; Licciardello, Concetta (2014-01-01). "A genealogy of the citrus family". Nature Biotechnology. 32 (7): 640–642. doi:10.1038/nbt.2954. PMID 25004231.
  3. ^ a b Wu, G. Albert; Prochnik, Simon; Jenkins, Jerry; Salse, Jerome; Hellsten, Uffe; Murat, Florent; Perrier, Xavier; Ruiz, Manuel; Scalabrin, Simone (2014-07-01). "Sequencing of diverse mandarin, pummelo and orange genomes reveals complex history of admixture during citrus domestication". Nature Biotechnology. 32 (7): 656–662. doi:10.1038/nbt.2906. ISSN 1087-0156. PMC 4113729. PMID 24908277. [T]he W. Murcott mandarin is believed to be a chance zygotic seedling of Murcott tangor, itself a presumed F1 hybrid of sweet orange and an unknown mandarin.
  4. ^ Shimizu, Tokurou; Kitajima, Akira; Nonaka, Keisuke; Yoshioka, Terutaka; Ohta, Satoshi; Goto, Shingo; Toyoda, Atsushi; Fujiyama, Asao; Mochizuki, Takako; Nagasaki, Hideki; Kaminuma, Eli; Nakamura, Yasukazu (2016). "Hybrid Origins of Citrus Varieties Inferred from DNA Marker Analysis of Nuclear and Organelle Genomes". PLOS ONE. 11 (11): e0166969. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1166969S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166969. PMC 5130255. PMID 27902727.
  5. ^ Laszlo, Pierre (2007). Citrus: a history. University of Chicago Press. p. 75.
  6. ^ "Mandarin tangerine called Nadorcott". U.S. Patent Plant #10480. Retrieved 16 April 2014. CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)