Author Topic: Is this a rough lemon?  (Read 1493 times)

JoshuaTilaranCR

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Is this a rough lemon?
« on: October 25, 2021, 12:48:30 PM »
A lady that lives in our town brought this lemon to me yesterday. She says it grows at her neighbors house and they cut it back and she grabbed some fruit for me. It's certainly a lemon smell and the taste is sour but also has a sweetness to it. The oil in the skin is very fragrant and it seems to have a lot of oil, I found a lot dripped on the counter after squeezing the juice out of it.





SoCal2warm

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #1 on: October 25, 2021, 01:00:34 PM »
The rough lemon I found had a very pleasant fragrant smell to it, like a sour orange, but had too much bitterness inside to eat.

JoshuaTilaranCR

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2021, 01:56:37 PM »
That's one thing I forgot to say, this has no bitterness at all. I even ate the rind and didn't detect much bitterness. I can see using this to make drinks and desserts that call for lemon. Here in Costa there are mostly just Persian limes, rangpur limes and key limes. Where I am we don't see lemons almost ever so this one turning up at someone's house in town is pretty neat. I'm going to get some scions and graft them onto a plant at our house and I want to ask the story of the tree. If it was planted from seed or if it was bought as something else or if it just appeared there.

Laaz

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2021, 05:21:53 PM »
It does appear to be rough lemon. It may have been a grafted tree & the rough lemon was the rootstock that took over after the original scion died back.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2021, 05:16:29 AM by Laaz »

Galatians522

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2021, 10:13:27 PM »
Is that fruit seedless? Every rough lemon I have ever cut/eaten had a ton of seeds. I have eaten the peel on rough lemons and it is good if you eat it fresh. However, it does go bitter quickly in my experience if you add it to the juice like a lot of old lemonade recipes call for.

JoshuaTilaranCR

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2021, 10:23:15 PM »
The first one I opened had maybe 8 seeds in it, this one had 3.

I went to look at the tree today but not close up. First I looked at the leaves to see if there were 2 different types of leaves on the tree, like trifoliate/normal single leaf and I couldn't see any difference. Then I followed the branches down to the main trunk and it was split almost right at the ground into 3 trunks. If it was grafted I couldn't tell. I need to ask the owner of the property it's on so I can check it closer. It's definitely an interesting lemon for me at least, the fact that it's sour and sweet at the same time is pretty cool. I took out a couple of the full juice vesicles and if you eat just one you taste the sweetness more than when you juice it and drink the juice straight.

Citradia

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #6 on: October 26, 2021, 07:24:52 AM »
Could it be a grapefruit deformed by mites?

JoshuaTilaranCR

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #7 on: October 26, 2021, 09:22:31 AM »
I don't think so, every fruit looked almost exactly the same, the smaller ones weren't so wrinkled but as they get bigger they get the wrinkles and bumps.

Galatians522

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #8 on: October 26, 2021, 10:32:29 PM »
What color are the new growth and flowers? Lemon flowers typically have some purple on them. I did some reading on the ucr web page and there are at least 4 known types of rough lemon--1 of which is supposed to be "sweet." I did not realize there was that much variation. Here is a link to the page. Many of the listed varieties don't differ much but came from different sources.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/roughlemons.html&ved=2ahUKEwiN1ueetOnzAhVGRjABHUHxCi4QFnoECAMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw33YfWwV8790VszJMyx8VyZ

pagnr

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #9 on: October 27, 2021, 03:51:02 AM »
What color are the new growth and flowers?

Rough Lemon has pinkish/red new grower tips and pink flower buds. I have collected quite a few fruit from different rootstock suckers, and they can vary from very seedy to few seeds. Also can vary year to year. Fruit usually has a classic aureole/nipple on the underside.
Still can't see photos on the forum sadly.

JoshuaTilaranCR

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #10 on: October 27, 2021, 11:24:30 AM »
What color are the new growth and flowers?

Rough Lemon has pinkish/red new grower tips and pink flower buds. I have collected quite a few fruit from different rootstock suckers, and they can vary from very seedy to few seeds. Also can vary year to year. Fruit usually has a classic aureole/nipple on the underside.
Still can't see photos on the forum sadly.

I'll have to get back to you on the colors of the new growth and flowers. Thanks for that link, I looked through it and saw some similar but nothing as bumpy but...I did see where it mentioned the volkamer lemon and I know that the guy in town with the nursery uses that lemon as a rootstock. I'm going to text him now and see what he thinks it might be.

pagnr

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Re: Is this a rough lemon?
« Reply #11 on: October 30, 2021, 05:28:35 PM »
Looking at the images, it also looks a bit like Alemow or Colo, Citrus macrophylla.
https://idtools.org/id/citrus/citrusid/factsheet.php?name=Alemow