My sister bought some small citrus from a grocery store in Texas. She threw away the packaging and I don’t recognize the fruit at all. A new variety?
She thinks it a mandarin, but to me mandarin are a darker orange color, are flatter, and don’t have an inverted navel at the end like these.
Easy peeling?
Maybe satsuma?
I’ll eat one tomorrow. I was too stuffed by family dinner.
I’ll try to see if I can find the packaging as I’m still quite curious.
PS satsumas are the main citrus grown in deep south Louisiana commercially. as they are one of the most cold hardy citrus varieties. That being said those commercial plots are a good 40+ miles south of me and almost completely surrounded by bayous and the end of the Mississippi River.
These little guys I wouldn’t mind growing in a pot.
Good news I can bring the photo to the local Becnel’s nursery and they should know. They are really the only citrus nursery down here and handle all the volume to other state nurseries.
Mandarines are squat not long.
I’ve seen identical looking citrus sold as satsumas in my local grocery store, but that doesn’t mean they were labeled correctly. There are a large number of different cultivars of satsuma, so maybe there are some with that shape that’s similar to a mini dekopan/shiranui/sumo?
Those look like tangelo (minneola) to me. They are just small sized ones. We have them for sale around here as well.
They usually have more acid than mandarins and are quite juicy, often with a seed or two per fruit but most sections seedless.
I wonder if they are just sorting out smaller ones to sell in bags or are a new variety they’ve created to market like “cuties”.
@zendog looks to be closest.
Found the packaging in the trashcan. Could not find a description for just ‘Bella’, but found one for ‘Sugar Belle’ with a photo identical to these and it mentions it being a hybrid reminiscent at least in looks to tangelo.
I found this information on a grower’s site.
What are Sugar Belles?
Developed in the 1980s by University of Florida researchers hoping to create a citrus variety resistant to greening disease, sugar belle oranges are a cross between a honeybell orange and a clementine. Sugar belle citrus fruits are seedless and easy to peel, making them perfect for snacking, but their sweet flavor, bright aroma also make them ideal for juicing, in salads, desserts and other dishes.
Yes I read that as well, but these are not labeled the same so they might just be another similar variety.
Pure fabulousness!
You can’t really generalize like that about shape. Mandarin is a generic term for many different cultivars and some are not squat and long.
That’s absolutely true. And they cross so easily nobody knows exactly how many there are. The best guess is 200 ‘known’ cultivars of mandarin. It’s actually confusing if you don’t read up. Satsuma, mandarin and mikan are quite often used interchangeably to describe hundreds of variations. And, most assuredly, they come in many different shapes and qualities.
Something similar to your avocado trial is exactly what needs to happen with mandarins in the Pacific Northwest. I would love to go to Japan and explore the marginal citrus regions. I’ve read there are some extraordinarily hardy mandarin trees growing on the northeastern periphery of Honshu. I would love to bring some of those cuttings back to trial here.
I bought a bag of satsuma last winter that knocked my socks off. I wanted to know what specific cultivar so I called the number on the bag. I reached people who weren’t on the farming side of things. So they gave me a different number to call. I never followed up. Though I did get a few seeds from that bag, planted them and now have one seedling. Maybe in a decade we’ll know if they’re any good. 
So then are all clementines mandarins? I find there is a distinct difference in taste. All of the Cuties, Suzies and Lulus taste similar (named Clementines) but mandarins that we get in France are a distinct shape. Very sweet and with a distinct mandarine flavor. This is easy for me to say as our import laws for fruits are not as strict as yours in the US. Our fruits from Morocco are fabulous. Do you get your Mandarines from Spain or California?
From Wikipedia: The mandarin orange (Citrus reticulata), also known as mandarin or mandarine, is a small, rounded citrus tree fruit. Treated as a distinct species of orange,[1] it is usually eaten plain or in fruit salads.[1] Tangerines are a group of orange-coloured citrus fruit consisting of hybrids of mandarin orange with some pomelo contribution.
Mandarins are smaller and oblate,[1] unlike the spherical common oranges (which are a mandarin–pomelo hybrid).[2] The taste is considered sweeter and stronger than the common orange.[3] A ripe mandarin is firm to slightly soft, heavy for its size, and pebbly-skinned. The peel is thin, loose,[1] with little white mesocarp,[4] so they are usually easier to peel and to split into segments.[1]
Also I am sure you have tangerines? They too have a very distinct taste. They are also squat or oblate in shape and peel very easily, as do mandarines. But its another citrus that is small and harder to find in markets.
I also have a fabulous Satsuma (mandarin).
The word Satsuma is a former Japanese province where mandarins are widely grown in the Japanese citrus region. It’s a generic term for mandarin, which are called mikan and come in every shape and size imaginable. Here is a great article about Japanese citrus.
Read this passage about mikan (aka mandarin)
Here is the whole article:
Most the mandarins I’ve consumed came from my home state of California.
