How are Ojai Pixies related to other varieties of tangerines/mandarins?
All tangerines are mandarins, but not all mandarins are tangerines. The name ‘tangerine’ originated from fruit grown in Tangiers and has been used in the United States for many varieties of mandarin. Ojai Pixie Growers have adopted it for the Pixie. The Pixie tangerine was developed by Howard B. Frost at the University of California Citrus Research Center in 1927. James W. Cameron and Robert K. Soost later worked with the Pixie and the variety was released for commercial production in 1965 which is when the first trees were planted in the Ojai Valley. There are several hundred varieties of mandarins in the world, of which several dozen are grown commercially in great quantities. Historically in California we grew the Dancy, which is a lovely, loose-skinned, comparatively late season, and scrumptiously delicious tangerine. They don’t store well either on or off the tree, and they have seeds, which in recent years has made them commercially undesirable, but their flavor still defines “ta
