The Tropical Fruit Forum

SoCal2Warm, since I can read and write Japanese to a certain extent, I can confirm that it is NOT call Hanaharu. It is in fact read as Keraji. Japanese can be very confusing at times as there are multiple way of reading the same kanji. Generally speaking, the reading of kanji can be split into Onyomi and Kunyomi. In this case, it is simply read as keraji I hope this clears up any confusion.

Interesting to know. I suspected that.
So there's an alternate way to write "Keraji" in kanji?

That Taiwanica tree in the above pictures has been doing very well at the Georgia Southern University Armstrong campus in Savannah. It's at the corner of Arts Drive and Library Drive outside the Science Center. At least according to the USDA climate map, Savannah is in zone 8b.


In Japan it was traditionally used as an ornamental, sometimes for making vinegar.

The taste is not supposed to be that good, worse than Yuzu, but at least it does not have any awful poncirus flavor.

Here are the latest pictures of the Yuzu and Keraji seedlings that are recovering from last winter.

Yuzu

It's a little over 12 inches tall now.

Keraji

Maybe only one and a half inches high, but many leaves.

I'm just going to repeat myself, so I think I'll just copy & paste from another thread.

On April 5 (2019 ) I talked to Nat Bradford. He used to live in Seneca, South Carolina, which he insisted is zone 7a. (I'm looking at a USDA hardiness map and Seneca appears to be listed as being on the border of zone 8a/7b though, but I pressed him on this point at he was adamant that the location was definitely not in zone 8 )
He said he grew a Taiwanica lemon and an C. ichangensis outside there unprotected, and they have survived for 7 years. At one point he says the temperature got down to 4 °F. He says his Taiwanica lemon survived all this time. I specifically asked if it had survived the freeze in 2017-2018, and he said yes, he had gone back to the property and saw the tree was still there, even though he doesn't live there anymore. The Taiwanica was grown from a seedling and is not grafted. He initially grew them in one gallon pots and left them outside, they survived. Then he eventually planted them out into the ground.
The C. ichangensis has lost leaves and the leaves have turned yellow-brown every Winter, but he says the Taiwanica did not lose leaves.

I was very surprised to hear this.

His Taiwanica has fruited, but he says his C. ichangensis never set flowers.

I also asked how his hardy citrus hybridization attempts have been going, and he said he's been busy and has a few seedlings from his Taiwanica, but nothing else besides that.

This is the same Nat Bradford whose name is connected to the Bradford watermelon, once a famous heirloom variety in the South, and he did an internship at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.

Here's the Bloomsweet



The leaves are looking a healthier green, but unfortunately it is not looking quite as big as it was last year.

I know it doesn't look like much but showing some of these smaller marginal hardiness varieties can help set a good reference point for what is able to survive here.

September 25

Here's the thread that contains all the information about Liudmila I was able to compile together.
" ichangensis x Satsuma ? " http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=31947.msg351168#msg351168

For some reason the thread doesn't appear in a search when I type in "Liudmila", so it's probably best I share the link here.

Daisy to me seems to have a tropical mandarin flavor.
It's not my thing, but that's probably just personal preference. I could see how that type of flavor could be appealing to others.

I had a look at jim VH 's Citsuma Prague and I am now strongly inclined to believe this is a chimera.

I've grown many hybrid seedlings, and the leaves will always be either distinctly monofoliate, bifoliate, trifoliate, or sometimes a single leaf might be bifurcated a little bit at the tip, so a form of conjoined bifoliate. The leaf growth generally makes a distinct decision whether any particular leaf is going to be monofoliate or trifoliate.

But the Citsuma Prague leaves I saw, when the leaves were trifoliate, they were all merged together into a single leaf, as if the leaf growth did not have a clear signal whether to be trifoliate or monofoliate, it was a mix of both together on each leaf. Like a compound trifoliate.
Also some of the branches seemed to display mostly monofoliate leaves while other branches displayed mostly the compound trifoliate leaves.
I have not noticed this pattern on my other hybrid seedlings, the distribution of different shaped leaves mostly appears to be random.

I am not an expert on this of course, but my observations, and comparison between Citsuma Prague and other hybrid seedlings, make me inclined to believe this may indeed be a chimera.

I had been a little skeptical before and had wondered if Citsuma Prague could perhaps be some sort of hybrid.


I am now attempting to create a graft chimera between C. ichangensis and Keraji, and between Early St. Ann Satsuma and a special seedling of Changsha mandarin, which jim believes may possibly be hardier than regular Changsha.
I don't know how much success my attempts will have, but it's worth a try. (I suspect actually managing to successfully form a graft chimera would take a lot of trial and error)

My thoughts are if the two are rooting together, from adjacent wood that is healing together, the bud growth might merge together as it is growing out roots.

jim standing in front of the Yuzu for scale (K)

Cold hardy citrus can grow in the Pacific Northwest.

Ichang lemon is Pomelo x Yuzu hybrid

As far as I am aware, it has not been determined with certainty whether it's a Pomelo x ichangensis, or Pomelo x Yuzu hybrid.

At least in the DNA marker studies I have looked at, Yuzu shares a close enough DNA marker profile to ichangensis that it was not possible for them to determine or differentiate in this case.
I'm not saying it would be impossible to determine, I'm just saying I'm not aware of a specific study that revealed which of those two the parent was, and was more specific.

Sorry about that though, you are right, I should have clarified that Ichang lemon might not have been a direct hybrid of ichangensis. I thought that might just get too complicated though.

  I still believe that all of the hybrid of either pepada or trifoliate would lose its leaf symmetrical shape.

I have 3 different hybrids of ichangensis, and they do not display symmetric shaped leaves like ichangensis.
ichangensis x pomelo (Ichang lemon, originated from Chinese cultivar)
ichangensis x kumquat (Ichangquat)
ichangensis x trifoliata (N1tri)
I have seen pictures of ichangensis x sweet orange, and its leaves look like orange.

It's possible a backcross of one of these hybrids with ichangensis might display ichangensis-like leaves.

I grew numerous seedlings from ichangquat, and none of them showed the distinct ichangensis leaves, which makes me inclined to think this trait may not show up in the F2 generation either. Although of course it could just be the particular ichangquat hybrid to begin with which by chance did not inherit the right set of genes.

So I really can't say with completely certainty whether any hybrid with ichangensis might display ichangensis-type leaves.

Have you tried ichang papeda seedlings? I wonder whether or not the same situation would occur to ichang papeda when it was young.

No, I have not grown ichang papeda seedlings, but do have several very small rooted cuttings. They all show the normal symmetrical petiole-leaf shape seen in mature ichang papeda. I doubt seedlings would be any different.