this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Oranges are green until they are ripe. What tropical place did you see a ripe green orange?
Vietnam. Brazil. Ecuador. A lot of equatorial places.
The orange color is caused by something happening to the chlorophyll when the temperatures cool. But in the tropics, temps can be fairly steadily warm and don't trigger that reaction.
Holy shit!
Crazy!
Huh, TIL. I worked at an orange grove in the subtropics, and knew about the cold snap for other aspects of citrus, I never knew about the peel.
Apparently oranges and other citrus fruit (and others, like bananas) are "degreened" with ethylene.
Here's a video with bananas. https://youtu.be/jzjBAAv9nxc
I can also say that bananas are quite yellow when ripe, without additives. Have had banana trees in 2 different houses, of 2 different banana varieties.
I think I unintentionally blurred together two separate things.
Citrus can be ripe and still be coloured green. Ethylene is used to make them orange, as they look more appealing to buyers that way.
Green bananas on the other hand are just not ripe. Ethylene is still used here, but to "kickoff" the fruit's ripening process - in just a few days it becomes yellow and ripe.
There's many things that release ethylene naturally when ripening, like tomatoes, apple, kiwi, ... These need to be kept away from other sensitive produce (lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, ...) as they'll start looking "nasty" and lower their shelf life.
Having grown up in Brazil, I can confidently say that most of our oranges are indeed orange. Green is usually the colour of non-ripe ones and you can expect extreme acidity from them.
You would be confidently wrong. They are artificially de-greened with ethylene. In Brazil it doesn't get cold enough for natural de-greening. Also, having tasted both natural green and de-greened (and naturally de-greened) oranges. Their outer color has no correlation whatsoever to the taste.