The grapefruit was brought to Texas by Spanish missionaries in the late 1800s with the first grapefruit grove being planted in 1893. Decades later, a single mutation on a tree became the famed Texas Ruby Red grapefruit, which was the first-ever grapefruit to receive a patent. Over the years, mutagenesis was used to experiment with ruby red grapefruit to create the perfect variant, which has become the ancestor of most modern commercially grown ruby red grapefruit today. The impact of the Ruby red grapefruit on the state was so great that in 1993, it was declared as the state fruit.
- Kingdom: Plantae
- Order: Sapindales
- Family: Rutaceae
- Genus: Citrus
- Species: C. s paradisi
- Binomial name: Citrus × paradisi
Ruby Red Grapefruit Trivia
- The ruby red grapefruit was a random mutation that was discovered in 1929.
- When it was first discovered, the grapefruit was called the “forbidden fruit.”
- The grapefruit got its name because the fruit clustered on trees like giant grape clusters.