Oranges have several crops on the tree at a time. The orange one may well be ready to pick. The yellow ones are turning orange or are in trouble (cut one in half to check), the green ones are too young to be orange.

ok but these are different fruit. Literally, there are lemons growing on the same tree as an orange. Not different phases of the same fruit, actual different fruit. Is this possible?

You might have what has become known as a "Fruit cocktail" tree.

It's not a hybrid.

It's simply 3, 4, 5 and sometimes 6 cultivars (varieties) of citrus budded ("grafted") onto one central stock.

Common to these marketing gimmicks is that one or more cultivars become overly aggressive and one or more of the cultivars simply fade away, not being able to compete.

Joe

Are you sure the orange fruit isn't a ripe Meyer Lemon.... which has an orange skin when ripe. The flavor is a mild lemon with orange undertones. It can have Meyer Lemons in various stages of growth all at the same time.

I guess I didn't understand if the Valencia tag was on this same tree or not.

The fruit is definitely an orange while the rest of the tree produces lemons/limes. The valencia orange is growing from a different large branch than the rest of the fruit. I assumes it was just grafted together which I understand is not completely uncommon. However, this tree is producing great fruit of all three varieties. I think you are right about one fruit taking over though since there are several branches blooming lemons/limes and only one orange currently in bloom. I just wanted to make sure I am not crazy!

If you think THAT'S awesome, Sheax, you should check out Joe's 50-n-1 tree! :)

Brenda