The Tropical Fruit Forum

Simply the size of pot wouldn't be doing that by itself.  I suspect damping off type fungal infection starting at soil surface level.  Check for browning of stem color right at soil surface (or slightly below/above) occurring first before rest of plant.  I've lost many that way.

Will seeds within a slightly immature fruit continue to improve viability after the fruit is picked?  I usually hear that citrus fruit do not continue to ripen after picking (But I have heard a few disagreements to this.).  What about seeds?  Due to freezes, my borderline hardy citrus need to be picked before totally ripe (or even fall off).  I am primarily interested in the seeds for producing a next generation.  Will letting these green/halfgreen fruit sit on the counter for a week or two help the seeds to become more viable, or should I just cut them and extract the seeds right away and plant right away?

Larger sizes are easier on the eyes and fingers, but tiny can work.  I know they are larger seeds, but some people graft chestnuts onto barely germinating nuts ("nut-grafting").

Am curious on your F2s that have fruited: What ratio of peeling surfaces are completely smooth and shiny, versus, slightly fuzzy inherited from the poncirus?

I have not understood how silica (like what composes a chemist's inert glass flask) can also be bioavailable such that plants like horsetail incorporate it in their tissues.

How high was your "high grafting" ?

Till,  Thanks for your description of the fruits.  That is interesting and I will save it for doing some comparisons, hopefully.  I have never seen or had any of the fruits, because my trees are seedlings from bought seed.  For several years (8+ years ago) I bought seed by the quart from "Willits & Newcomb, Inc." in California.  (I think it is new ownership and name now.) They produced seed for nurseries to use to grow rootstocks.  The nurseries would keep only the uniform seedlings to graft commercial citrus onto, while weeding out any deviants.  Opposite of this, my goal was to keep the deviants, hoping for the zygotic genetic recombinations, and let the nucellar clones die out in my zone 7 winters, along with any non-hardy recombinations.   The last (and largest) batch of seed I bought were originally said to be Sacaton Citrumelo, but later they said they were Yuma Citrange.  So I am not 100% sure which they were and am for now just assuming their last designation is the correct one.  From what I have read, the Yuma does have a significant percentage of zygotic seed, and I have gotten a fair number of diverse plants from them (of course the vast majority of the thousands of seedlings have long since frozen to death, or were choked out by weeds).  Last summer was the first any of these bloomed (just a few late blooms with too little time left to mature).   Maybe this year I will get a fruit or two.  I was quite disappointed that some of my largest trees died this winter/spring after doing so well the past several years.  I am theorizing that their root system was not hardy enough, because the above ground trees looked good until they discolored late.  Fortunately I had grafted some of them onto P. trifoliata elsewhere, and those survived well.  So I think it was a root hardiness issue.  If you come up with promising individuals, be sure to graft them onto something hardier for insurance.

The previous winter, these trees all survived with gradual leaf loss toward totality by spring.  This past winter went different.  The Christmas cold and wind burnt the edges of the leaves, but did not kill them, leaving many of them to still be alive and green till now.  Even after a couple of weeks passed, it looked like there would be near 100% tree survival, but sometime in March I realized that quite a number were dying.  So I've ended up with some being nearly evergreen and others dead and others in-between.  In the picture, the whiteish dead twigs at the top were late tender growth that was killed as expected at the beginning of winter (which happens anyway, any year, even on P. trifoliata).  The more golden dead twigs (one with orange ribbon) are from the disappointing late winter kill off of trees that had survived the last several winters.

ok, so I did plant hundreds of my Flying Dragon seeds. So if I see the poly seeds germinate, then they are not the zygotic (parent clones)? These poly seedlings would be the cross pollinated seeds and can be a hybrid seedling correct?

The poly seeds have mostly clones, not zygotic, and not cross pollinated, and not hybrid seedlings.  The mono seeds have the greater chance of being hybrids from cross pollination or some recombination if self pollenated.  But as with a lot of biological systems, it's a matter of probability, not 100% black or white.

Quote from: brian on April 12, 2023, 09:37:35 PM

I have yet to find a single seed in my shiramui/sumo/dekopan fruits.  You are lucky

I bought probably 50+ without success, and then had a run of 1-2 seeds, culminating in one fruit with 12 seeds! More seeds in off-brand dekopon than AC Foods' Sumo Citrus, not sure if because of selection pressure in their budline, or different citricultural practices resulting in cross-pollination. All my germinating dekopon seeds seem to be monoembryonic.

  Are they large enough to see if any variation among them?

Being a desert plant, does Erimocitrus require more alkaline soil?  I've had terrible success with it.

I don't have an answer to your question, but I too have wondered about graft compatibility, wondering if any edible cherries (or any stone fruit) can be grafted onto P. serotina.  We have many wild P. serotina volunteering around here.  One time I grafted a sweet cherry onto it, but it only lived about three years, and then the graft failed.

Does Citrus Glauca require a different soil, or PH, than other citrus?  I have a 4 year old seedling that is only 5 inches tall, when all my other citrus grow very well.  I've wondered since it is native to dessert soils, then maybe it needs something different?