will thomasville citrangequat always be nucellar?

[lavender87]

  I just came across several webpages about thomasville citrangequat and some claimed that citrangequat always produce nucellar seeds, so it is guaranteed to always come true to seed while others denied that opinion.
 
  My personal experience about thomasville citrangequat would tend to support that citrangequat does not always come true to seed. The 2 thomasville citrangequat trees were bought from Stan Mckenzie farm. One was grafted has monofoliate leaves and was thornless while the other one came from seed which has mixed foliate of mono, di, trifoliate leaves with some thorns. The flavor of fruits from both trees were almost the same. The amazing fact about citrangequat trees from Stan was the seedlessness which was contradicted to the original description of thomasville citrangequat about seediness.

  So I guess Thomasville citrangequat might not come true to seed. It was hard to get an exaxt same tree as the original one if grow from seed. Probably some silent genes will show up somehow on off-springs.

[jim VH]

I planted some seeds from my Stan Mackenzie monofoliate grafted tree.  All  ten of the resultant viable seedlings showed a mixture of mono, bi and trifoliate leaves.  There was also a variability in hardiness.  Of the ten, only two survived a one night 10F event in December 2013.  These were later planted out, one at my house, one at my nephews.  Both of these survived the January 2017 8F extended freeze on their own roots with somewhat less damage than the much larger 'Stan the Man' tree. 

Interestingly- or not- these trees are the only citrus I've tried which have survived on their own roots, or any rootstock other than trifoliate, although there was snow on the ground, which may have protected the roots.
I later grafted a monofoliate bud from this tree to a Flying Dragon rootstock- the resultant growth is also almost exclusively monofoliate.

[lavender87]

I planted some seeds from my Stan Mackenzie monofoliate grafted tree.  All  ten of the resultant viable seedlings showed a mixture of mono, bi and trifoliate leaves.  There was also a variability in hardiness.  Of the ten, only two survived a one night 10F event in December 2013.  These were later planted out, one at my house, one at my nephews.  Both of these survived the January 2017 8F extended freeze on their own roots with somewhat less damage than the much larger 'Stan the Man' tree. 

Interestingly- or not- these trees are the only citrus I've tried which have survived on their own roots, or any rootstock other than trifoliate, although there was snow on the ground, which may have protected the roots.
I later grafted a monofoliate bud from this tree to a Flying Dragon rootstock- the resultant growth is also almost exclusively monofoliate.

  Thank you for your interesting report. It was very helpful. By the way, can you tell any difference at all between the fruit quality of the 2 survials?

  I guess since there were multiple "bloodlines" in Thomasville Citrangequat, the off-springs would be hard to predict. Some random off-springs might carry silent genes which make them as cold hardy as their parent citrange. The fruit quality might change randomly and silently as well in their off-springs without the cross pollination of other citrus type. The problem is there were not many seeds in thomasville citrangequat fruits to grow and not all of them viable due to the bad quality of seeds. There is a thin (sterile) seed in about every 2-3 fruits.

[SoCal2warm]

Here's a Thomasville seedling I'm growing


interpret it how you may
the leaves look intermediate between trifoliate and monofoliate, but look like they're tending much more on the side of monofoliate. (or rather to be more accurate I should say 6 leaves are single, and one of them seems to be doing a poor job trying to break into two, bifoliate)
this is just a young seedling though

I removed the seed from the fruit myself, so this definitely came from Thomasville citrangequat

[Ilya11]

Thomasville, like most of citruses is loosing its thorns when it becomes mature, also each time the mature wood is grafted the twigs contain fewer thorns.
Seeds or no seeds depends on nearby pollination and environment that permits Thomasville to flower several times a season.
I do not believe that there are exist several subclones of Thomasville, just different stages of cultivation.

Thomasville like most of kumquat  hybrids has problems when growing on its own roots. Sometime it is seen immediately at seedling stage, but it could also happen lately.
I have for the moment four generations of its seedlings, if grafted on poncirus, they, even slowly growing on there roots, have the same hardiness and fruit quality.



 

[SoCal2warm]

I have for the moment four generations of its seedlings, if grafted on poncirus, they, even slowly growing on there roots, have the same hardiness and fruit quality.

Ilya, did all of them look like my seedling in the seedling stage, with mostly monofoliate leaves?

[lavender87]

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[lavender87]

Thank Ilya11

[Ilya11]

I have for the moment four generations of its seedlings, if grafted on poncirus, they, even slowly growing on there roots, have the same hardiness and fruit quality.

Ilya, did all of them look like my seedling in the seedling stage, with mostly monofoliate leaves?

The number of leaflets as well as  thorns depends on their vigor of growth, slowly growing seedlings have more mono and difoliate leaves and smaller thorns. When grafted, they became very similar.

[jim VH]

Hi Socal

My Citrangequat hasn't put out blooms until this year-7 years after sprouting- and neither of them looks like setting.

However, my nephews plant started blooming 4 years ago.  He says the fruit is just as good as the Mackenzie farms plant, or even better.  I actually haven't tried one of his- I have a sufficient number of  Quats from my own large tree.  I'll make a point of getting one of his fruits this coming October to compare.

I did notice my seedling is becoming increasingly mono-foliate as it ages.  This years flush is almost exclusively mono-foliate.

[lavender87]

"...."

[Ilya11]

Most of the changes in genomic DNA (mutations) do not result in the changes of plants traits ( phenotype ). Citrus genome is largely a junk DNA.