The Tropical Fruit Forum

Mangosteen got fried

Those made me think it was easy, but for all I know they resulted from thousands of attempts.

I think the main barrier, in many citrus types (and this tends to be particularly true for hybrids) is a high percentage of nucellar seeds, which means that the majority of the seeds grown will be genetic clones of their parents. Grapefruits tend to be somewhere around 70-90 percent nucellar, for example.
That means you have to grow all the seedlings and you may not know if any are actually hybrids until much later when they begin producing fruits. Although of course there are several strategies to be able to help identify seedlings that are different from their parents.

For example might be using trifoliate citrange pollen on a grapefruit as the female parent. If any of the seedlings have trifoliate leaves, you know they are citrange-grapefruit hybrids. Or possibly the reverse of that could be possible: If any seedlings from a citrumelo don't have trifoliate leaves than they are probably hybrids of the other pollination parent that has ordinary leaves.


Another topic with more information on which citrus types tend to be nucellar: "Thread for Citrus Breeders"
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=24518.0

Really leafing out now

Which species of Frankincense do you have?
Is it B. sacra, or B. carterii, or are you not sure?

You can order galbanum essential oil online. It's used (in very small amounts) in perfumery. It smells very intense and "green", although I don't particularly care for it.

Satsuma does tend to be a fairly resilient variety.

And keep in mind, the flavor of the fruit only tend to improve with age.

Don't get eaten by the natives.

The Andaman islands hold interest from an anthropological perspective too. In extremely ancient times it is believed India and the entire Southeast Asian region was populated by a primitive people similar to the population still remaining today on the Andaman islands.

(Early Twentieth Century anthropologists classified them into their own race, Nigritos, the last remaining remnants of which today are rapidly dying out and may effectively become extinct)

Ideally I should have waited until they were bigger, but I worried if I didn't get them in the ground they might not survive. I haven't been very good about maintaining them well in small containers.
In small containers they need constant attention and care to make sure they don't dry out (and they don't do well with waterlogged soil either). I just have way too many of them to put in larger containers.

The Winters here can actually be pretty mild (though long), so I'll just have to hope the small ones can survive. They have a much better chance in the ground than in a container if they're going to be left outside. The cold here mostly stays slightly above freezing. This January I went out and there were a lot of camellias in bloom, and there were even a few blooms on my rose bush (though they didn't look so well), though it was an unusual Winter this year. There are some people in the neighborhood growing bananas (the ornamental kind) outside.

I also have 'Arctic Frost' next to "Ten Degree" mandarin, and later hope to eventually make a hybrid.



Arctic Frost is hybrid between an early ripening variety of Satsuma and Changsha.


Ten Degree is a hybrid between Clementine and Yuzu.

Finally, a fruit on the Passe Crassane:

ClemYuz 3-3 is also known as Ten  Degree tangerine.  Its principle downfall, is that it matures so very late (around Christmas) therefore the fruit is frequently damage by November and December freezes.

It may hold some value to further breeding though. I was thinking a cross with an early ripening mandarin like Fallglo or Xie Shan.

I planted 3 Arctic Frost last spring. They did well during Winter and are growing well,

Yes, but I'm in the PNW. The winters here are probably just a tiny bit milder than where you are, and we don't really have cold snaps, but the big issue is the prolonged cool to cold temperatures that last so long throughout the first part of the year. Some say it's almost like we don't have a real Spring season. The citrus did not really begin showing any signs of growth until late May to early June, with the exception of a Satsuma mandarin that was covered in plastic sheeting in a cold frame, when we had a short bout of unusually warm temperatures in April.

I'm not concerned as much about the Winter freeze as I am the constantly cold temperatures that follow for months afterwards. None of this cold is actually freezing, but it seems the citrus have difficulty dealing with it and it does cause leaf drop. I do expect, however, that once every 4 to 8 years there might be a really cold winter, but even those wouldn't be anything unusual for zone 7.

The problem isn't so much cold events, it's overall lack of warmth.

planted out in the ground in mid-March, while the little tree was just beginning to set fruits. The tree could not take the cold temperatures (not freezing though) and completely defoliated, all except one tiny leaf. Most of the branches died back.
But now it's beginning to push out growth.

Pacific Northwest, zone 8a

(will have to show pictures later, it's too slow right now)