The Tropical Fruit Forum

My Swingle Citrumelo blooms on new growth so far as I see. It blooms for the second year and still not very much.

Flower buds on old wood seem to be quite common for trifoliate hybrids. Swingle 5 Star blooms mainly on old wood but also on new growth. Another Citrumelo of mine (Sacaton / Yuma Citrange ?) also blooms mainly on old wood and on new growth. My Morton blooms primarily on old wood but also on new growth. My C35 blooms for the second year and still has not many flowers. It also has winter buds, so blooms on old wood but also on new shoots. African Shadock x Poncirus primarily blooms on short flowering sproots, so not quite on old wood but almost so. It resembles my Chandler in that regard.

Sanford Curafora blooms on new growth as does Staraji. Both are F2 hybrids in which the citrus elder has gained dominance.

Yuzu, as far as I remember, blooms on short flowering sproots, so not on old wood as C. ichangensis but also not on fully developed shoots like mandarins.

Kumquat hybrids bloom year around, so not only in summer as kumquats but also in spring like citrus.

To sume up, it seems to me that the flowering habit of hybrids is in the middle of the respective parents. That is to say that Poncirus hybrids have winter buds like Poncirus but they are not so fully developed and big. They appear a little bit later and seem to require a bit more growth or development than pure Poncirus flowers. Anatomically, Poncirus flowers are also short twigs but the flowers of hybrids tend to appear on more fully developed twigs, i. e. on very short flowering shoots with more than one flower. So they are extented Poncirus inflorescences or shortened citrus (mandarin) inflorences depending on the perspective. The first flowering wave tends more to the Poncirus type the second more to the citrus (mandarine) type while the first wave is the main wave.

Pure Citrus is not uniform in its flowering habit. Compare for instance C. ichangensis, pumelo and mandarins. Poncirus can also flower on new growth. But that is extremly rare.) So Poncirus hybrids are also not all alike.


I prefer plants like Poncirus in my cool climate. They bloom earlier and so fruits have more time to ripen. A plant like Sanford Curafora blooms one month later than Poncirus, just because it blooms on new growth. This month is the one month that is lacking in autumn to allow the fruits to ripen before frost.

Superb!
Does Bernhard sell it?

I agree that Pumelo is best as the female parent. I had, however, mysterious problems use my Chandler as female parent. I know that other were more successfull. But I for my part never got seeds from the combination Chandler (mother) x Poncirus (father). I got at least one hybrid Poncirus (mother) x Chandler (father). What also worked was Chandler (mother) x (African Shadock x Poncirus) (father). Seedlings of the latter cross differ greatly from pumelolike to ponciruslike.

I only say that that you better try both directions of the cross even though Chandler as mother seems to be the best choice. Plant can react quite erratic. What seems probable in theory is sometimes difficult in practice. And what other could do you may have problems with.

Descriptions in nurseries must in general be critically read. Besides citrus, my other hobby are edible mountain ashes and mountain ash hybrids. I have meanwhile almost all varieties that I have ever found in the internet. It was not easy to get them and so I had to read through many catalogues. It happened very often that genealogies of hybrids were roughly shortened. And what also happened very often that they claimed cultivars to be self-fertile that are definitely not self-fertile. Fruit yeald was also often exaggerated. Some nurseries either do not know better or they just write what sells best. It is some work to compare the information in catalogues with first hand information of the breeders or with information of botanical gardens with university background.

Nonetheless, Poncirus with flagrant flowers seem to exist. Maybe Mikkel can post something about the cultivar he has gotten. I also believe that the woman from whom I got my budwood is absolutely trustworthy. She did not want to sell something. She did not even know that she has something special in her garden. And she was very definite upon my inquieries that she has smelled a very strong odor of the flowers not of the fruits (which are always flagrant). And last but not least she sent me everything for free.

It seems that F1 crosses with Kumquat have a thin peel. Kumquat x Buddhas Hand has a very thin peel that is not particulary tasty though edible. All Limequats have a relatively thin peel. Given the fact that Limes are F1 hybrids with Citron it seems clear that from all crosses between Kumquat and Citron only F2 (F3, F4 etc. also) crosses will have a peel thick enough to be of culinary interest no matter what Citron you use for breeding. Kumquat Buddhas Hand x Kumquat has fruits as big as a medium size plum, so not very big.

What about Australian Sunrise? I don't have it but from what I read it has a peel like kumquat. (The peel comes from its grandfather, Calamondin, or lets better say from its grand-grandfather, kumquat.)

F. obovata, as least the one I have, is very good. It has big sweet peel and sweet pulp with mandarine taste. It is the best tasting Citrus fruit for me and all my family.

Haruka is said to have a very sweet rind and sweet pulp. It was extremly difficult to get but I have it now. If you want budwood please send me a private message.

I have tasted some Citrons in Sizily. The peel of all is sweet and fruity and thus edible like an apple.

Pollen must be dried (best at 30°C but probably not warmer). Dried pollen can be frozen at -20°C for at least a year.

The best choice for crossing would in my view be crossing two citrandarins with each other or crossing a citrumelo with a citrandarin thus getting something orangelike. But it is always good to try new things. I had difficulties using Keraji as mother plant because it blooms later than many other hardy citrus plants. And I got a greater number of polyembryonic seeds. I also pollinated Poncirus with frozen Keraji pollen. But it is very doubtful that I got hybrids. The seedlings look too ponciruslike I would say.

Still, you my be more successful!

A short time of freezing but nonetheless amazing how it survived.

I agree with Mikkel. The idea that Yuzu descents from C. ichangensis was first of all a mere guess of Walter Swingle. It was a plausible guess. But that his idea has been repeated many thousand times in the last 100 years does not make it more true than genetic studies. Ichang Lemon is according to genetic studies a descendant of Yuzu.
There is a rule in science that we must not cast doubt on any believe without a good reason. Taste is not a very good reason I would say because C. ichangensis is a quite variable species. Different varieties have different fruits. And taste of hybrids is not necessarily conform to the taste of parental species.
Tanaka, by the way, was never convinced by Swingle even before genetic studies could be made.
Yuzu is an extremly old cultivar. It is well possible that its ancestor has died out.

Here a picture of my lasted Trifeola (Minneola x Poncirus or Poncirus x Minneola) seedlings. I pollinated with Staraji from Ilya. As you see three to four are monofoliate. Seedlings are from one fruit. They are somewhat weak because the fruit fell off unripe and seeds were immature. But now the seedlings start to grow better (under artificial light).



My Trifeola is a beautiful plant with big glossy leaves and beautiful flagrant flowers. The fruits, however, are never fully ripe at the end of the year and taste horribly bitter. Yet, I believe it is usefull for breeding.

The seedlings are not my first Trifeola seedlings. But its hard to tell how many were zygotic in the past. Some assumedly zygotic seedlings later looked uniform. Some assumed zygotic seedlings were to weak to finally survive. My experience with Trifeola seedlings is very limited.

I have it since last year. It is just a small rooted cutting. I do not know importation rules of Argentinia. But you may ask me in summer when it is hopefully so big that I can cut off a twig for you.

Hello everybody!

I had some fruits this year. They look exactly like those on the picture above. Size as big as a common plum. Peel very thin as on the picture what surprised me. Peel is not very sweet. Totally seedless fruits despite of pollination. The fruits are very juicy. And the taste of the juice is lemonlike and sour, perhaps not as sour as true lemons.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by Kumquat x Buddhas Hand. Not that the taste was bad. Not that the fruits are not usefull. Yes, you can enjoy them and do something with them. But I asked myself where the plus of the variety is. I would say a true lemon has a bit more complex taste. And a true lemon has usable peel. The peel of Kumquat x Buddhas Hand is too thin to be of real use and it does not taste better than lemon peel.

So my final assessment: Stay with lemons when you like sour fruits. When you want to breed something new you may use it in further crosses for it does have plenty of pollen. But it will be a kind of lottery what you will get because there is perhaps nobody who knows what its exact genetical constitution is. Can it pass off fingered fruits? Are fingered fruits a recessive trait still contained in Kumquat x Buddhas Hand or is it a dominant trait which then would be not present? In which crossing combination will the thick peel of Buddhas Hand citron show up again?

I would say: Nice to have but nothing special despite its origin. It only made me a bit more informed: I now know that kumquat crossed with citron leads to thin peel that is only moderately sweet. A pitty. I hoped it would be the opposite: very sweet and thick.

Very good idea to gather all these central information in a table.

Keraji appeared to me to be highly polyembroyonic, so probably also nucellar? Has somebody more experience with it?

Chimeras like Prag should be included in the table only with the additional remark what kind of seeds they produce. In case of Prag: Are the seeds from the Poncirus layer of the chimera or from the Satsuma layer? I mean for breeding it counts either as Satsuma or as Poncirus.