How Have Fruits Evolved?

Hale Groves is known for our citrus fruits! Grapefruit, Navel Oranges, Tangerines, Honeybells…we offer some of the best fresh fruit online. And not just citrus…you can buy fruit online from us for every season of the year, from pears in the autumn to peaches in the spring to cherries in the summer, all of it perfect and delicious. Our fruits gifts are handpicked and carefully inspected and sent to you at their peak of ripeness so you can enjoy them at their best no matter what time of year it is. That’s what makes fruit baskets from Hale Groves so amazing!

Have you ever looked into your Hale Groves basket of fruit and marveled at how amazing fruit is? Maybe you haven’t (we don’t blame you; it’s so darn delicious it’s hard to consider anything else!), but it is. You may not have thought about how much fruit has changed over the centuries. For instance, many of our most popular citrus fruits (grapefruit, oranges, Honeybells, etc.) are actually hybrid fruits. The mandarin, pomelo, and citron fruits are the original citrus species that, through breeding or natural hybridization, are the ancestors of many of our modern citrus cultivars. And they’re not the only ones – from orchard fruits to berries to stone fruits, many of the fruits we enjoy today bear little resemblance to their ancestors.

Here are Two fruits that are a lot different from how they looked and/or tastes back in the day:

Peaches

If you’re looking to deliver fruit to a loved one during the summer months, peaches are a great choice! Petite Florida Peaches, Orchard Fresh Peaches, Sweet Georgia Peaches – Hale Groves offers them all, and all are known for their sweet, juicy flavor. But they bear little resemblance to the sour, grape-sized peaches you’d have found growing wild in China 6,000 years ago.

Selective breeding has changed the peach over the centuries to be many times larger than they were formerly. Once many times smaller than the pit of a modern peach, today’s peaches provide a more substantial snack. You can thank generations of farmers for carefully breeding the fruit to bring out its better qualities, which include a succulent sweet flavor that has little in common with its lentil-tasting ancestor.

Apples

Orchard Fresh Apples are a popular fruit for delivery in the fall and winter months at Hale Groves. The modern apple shares a lot in common with its ancestor. You would probably recognize an old-style apple (which are similar to wild apples or crabapples) which are smaller and not so evenly shaped as their modern counterparts as apples, and indeed they share a lot in common with each other (including a chemical in their pips that converts to cyanide in the human body, making the seeds unsafe to consume in large quantities). Where it truly differs is in its taste: the test of Hale Groves’ Orchard Fresh Apples is far sweeter than what could be found prior to the domestication of the apple. That’s true of many wild fruits, which are much sourer than their domesticated descendants. With our apples, you won’t have to pucker up!

To Sum Up…

It’s interesting to think about how the fruits and vegetables we enjoy have changed since the advent of agriculture! Next time you taste a delectable piece of fruit, stop a moment to appreciate the work generations of farmers have done to help develop the taste of those fruits that are your favorites.

Shop Delicious Treats from Hale Groves

Hale Groves of Vero Beach, Florida, offers the best citrus and fruit gifts money can buy. Order some for your friends, family or yourself.

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