I thought the group might find this interesting. Those of us who grow lots of seedlings witness a wide range of mutations and unexpected growth habits, many of which seem to rapidly decline. Now and then I see seedlings with a very small growth habit, which don't tend to survive long. I wanted to share one which so far has survived, I think, a little bit more than a year, while still retaining an extremely compact form.
These three yuzu seedlings were grown from the same batch of seed collected from commercial yuzu fruit, almost certainly from a planting of VI 619. They were germinated at around the same time, and then potted up at the same time. They're a bit more than a year old, although I don't tend to keep records of when I've sown what, and can't be more specific. They spent the winter in an unheated garage and spent last summer sheltered on a cool outdoor rack, and so didn't put on much growth until this year. They've been in an unheated greenhouse since late winter, around February, and have had sun protection since around April. (It's a new greenhouse, and I've had some really difficult days managing sun and heat!)
This is the middle-sized seedling of the lot, being about three inches tall. You can see five or six leaf nodes.
Here is the largest of the three, about six inches tall. I treat my plants pretty lazily and in non-ideal conditions, so the variation between these two is typical. Maybe six or seven nodes.
This is the extremely compact seedling. You can see that the leaves are significantly smaller and darker, and that difference in colour is even more obvious in person. It's around a quarter of an inch tall. I think others have mentioned having tetraploid seedlings whose leaves are similarly small and dark?
Seen from the side, it is apparent that the node count is roughly similar, and that the inter-node spacing is extremely compressed compared to normal. (A friend of mine joked that the USSR would've loved this for their attempts to breed short, sprawling citrus that could be grown in trenches without much management. "Flat trees," I think was the goal.)
I have no idea if it will continue to survive, and perhaps it will die as a fleeting curiosity, as so many strange seedlings do — I hope not. It's oddly charismatic, especially in person, and I'd love some day to be able to see if grafting it onto a more vigorous rootstock results in pushing more growth with the same small inter-node distance, or if it would change growth habit completely. I haven't made any inspection of its roots, and given my expectation that it would be rather fragile, I'm not yet inclined to try.
Anyone else have any curiously-compact citrus seedlings?
Topic: On extremely compact seedlings. (Read 817 times)