Joseph Schlegel writes: “I don't have my copy of Speak, Memory close by to check, but in Другие берега (Drugie berega) Nabokov mentions how the "красное, как апельсин-королек, солнце низко висело в замерзшем сизом небе" ("red sun, like a blood orange, hung low in the frozen gray sky"). This describes the scene of his departure from Tamara. I'll need to check to see how this scene is described in the two English versions./ A little later Nabokov mentions how the smoke of Russia affected the colors of the sunset and how Blok described the same sunset in a diary entry. His connection of a smoky sunset simultaneously to loss of love and loss of homeland is worth noting.

[…] Follow up: the section in Speak, Memory that corresponds to my earlier-noted passage from Drugie berega mentions a "glacial haze and its red sun that, like a flushed moon, hung in the eastern windows." So the blood orange is lost (or gained) somewhere in translation.*

Jansy Mello: What a rare opportunity to read about a scene in Drugie berega and how it was rendered in Speak, Memory! (I found it on page 235 of my Vintage 1989 edition). The quote by R.Cohen blends two lines from Pale Fire. Not only line 29 is represented, also line 107.

                                                  Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun;

                                                  Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenon […]

As it was observed by Joseph Schlegel, the Russian blood orange was lost in translation in Speak, Memory. It will reappear many years later in Pale Fire. Thank you for helping me to explore the theme with this intriguing information about its time travels…

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In the internet I found a mention relating blood-orange and Nabokov in a description by Lila Azam Zanganeh (May 6,2004: “Butterflies and Other Bits of Nabokov’s Life, Dispersed to the Wind”)

“ To Vladimir Nabokov's favorite translator and only son, the thought of selling the books his father so intricately annotated with fantasy butterflies and personal asides was distressing, but it had to be done. That son, Dmitri Nabokov, who turns 70 on Monday, felt his own death approaching, he said in an interview, and he wanted to leave no loose ends./ So he decided to sell his father's memorabilia collection, which included an elaborate sketch on the flyleaf of a book showing the imaginary "Verina raduga Nab.," with its dappled wings of violet and blue, blood-orange glimmers and iridescent greens. It was auctioned in Geneva on Wednesday.”  
Like the lines in “Pale Fire,” blood-orange (a color) is mentioned by Lila A Zanganeh quite close to “iridescence” (in Shade’s poem, “the iridule,”on line 109) and the landscape around it is now American (Telluride). The imaginary rainbow butterfly’s description by LAZ appears to be a sensitive apprehension of V.Nabokov’s color vision and the feelings associated to it. **  

Another entry:   Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Painting

https://books.google.com.br/books?isbn... 

Gerard de Vries, ‎Donald Barton Johnson - 2006 - ‎Art

Pale Fire's 'blood-orange sun' might have been inspired by Turner's colour studies of sunset skies (PF 36).

And more (!): Who Put the Blood in the Oranges? “It is quite common to see writers involved in the reading of their works. We can simply remember Vladimir Nabokov’s interventions: his comment on professor Botkins introduced a third figure in the debate to know who, of John Shade or Charles Kinbote, was responsible for the “hoax” in Pale Fire. In the same way, John Hawkes’ triad on sexuality, which includes The Blood Oranges, Death, Sleep and a Traveler and Travesty, has become a triad because its author designated it as such (Hawkes, 1976). Critics simply followed his lead.” (Published in French as: Gervais, Bertrand and Anick Bergeron (2001), "Porté disparu... John Hawkes et la lecture des Oranges de sang," Poétique, vol. XXXII, no 128, pp. 487-505.)  http://nickm.com/vox/blood_oranges.html

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**- Verina raduga Nab. On the covers of “The Annotated Lolita” (interesting iridescent color variations of both wings)

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Les noms d'insectes étaient, pour un tel auteur, une mine inépuisable de noms et de sonorités qui devait le fasciner autant qu'elle me fascine, si on en juge par sa belle habitude d'offrir à son épouse sur des dédicaces de livres ou sur des dessins des papillons imaginaires baptisés à sa guise autour du prénom Vera :  Colias verae nabokov, Verina raduga, Papilionita -mot valise associant papilio et Lolita- verae, ou Verina verae. Dans la photographie d'un tel dessin, on voit la dédicace "From V to V", qui témoigne du rôle de cette lettre. (image)  Blog: Jean-Yves Cordier  2013.

                                      http://www.lavieb-aile.com/article-le-papillon-vanessa-atalanta-jonathan-swift-et-vladimir-nabokov-121494006.html