A small, sweet orange with a thin, easy-to-peel skin; also a bright orange-red color.
From Tangier (Tanger), a port city in Morocco where these fruits were exported to Europe in the 17th-18th centuries. The fruit was named after the city where European merchants bought it.
Tangerines, oranges, mandarins, and clementines are so closely related genetically that scientists think they all descend from a few original species in Southeast Asia—most of what we eat is actually human-created hybrids optimized for sweetness and seedlessness.
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