English nurseryman Thomas Rivers imported the variety from the Azores Islands and catalogued it in 1865 under the name Excelsior. Its ultimate origin remains uncertain.
Sent the cultivar from England to S. B. Parsons in the United States around 1870.
About 1870 Thomas Rivers supplied trees of the cultivar to S. B. Parsons, a Long Island nurseryman, establishing one of the earliest documented introductions of the clone into the United States.
Source of the 1876 shipment received by A. B. Chapman.
In 1876 Thomas Rivers sent trees to A. B. Chapman of San Gabriel, California. The unlabeled shipment included several varieties; one late-maturing orange was provisionally called Rivers Late.
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