The blood orange is the same orange that has naturally mutated. The origin of this orange returns to China and the southern Mediterranean, and its cultivation has begun in the 18th century in these areas. However today in Italy, blood oranges grow more than any other orange species and are the most popular of them all. The ingredient that gives red color to orange is called anthocyanin, and it only grows when the temperature is low at night, like the autumn and winter of the Mediterranean.