ORANGE LOVERS

“It was an annual mystery that baffled [South African] fruit farmer Alwyn van der Merwe,” The Christian Science Monitor says. “Each June, when his oranges began ripening, a troop of baboons would descend from the mountains … and target one particular tree among thousands, stripping it of all its oranges. Year after year it happened, until Mr. van der Merwe decided to inspect the lone tree and discovered that it was a different variety from the others, sweeter and ripening three weeks earlier. ‘We couldn’t believe it. The one tree was different from the thousands of others and the baboons knew it,’ he says. Samples of the tree were sent to be tested by the Citrus Growers Association, which confirmed it was a new variety of Mineola orange.”