Nansho Daidai and other Taiwanica cultivars

[bussone]

CORRECTION: I should probably update this, because the first "Taiwanica" that I had received from Lenzi was wrongly labeled. This summer it started to grow fruits that had a pointy end, while Taiwanica should have round fruit.

Did you ever decide what it was that you got the first time?

[Peep]

Did you ever decide what it was that you got the first time?

I suspect lemon or cedro, not sure, the fruits dropped after a little time.

[Peep]

Taiwanica from Lenzi

I had an interesting experience yesterday which leads me to a question.

I had two identical fruits on this supposedly Taiwanica plant and picked one, half green half yellow.

I squeezed out the cut fruit into my mouth expecting to soon be making a weird face from the tartness and also bitterness, but instead, nothing …

It was the most bland citrus I have ever tasted. There was no sourness, almost no bitterness, no sweetness (but I wasn’t expecting that), and not even citrusy flavor. I would not recognise it as a citrus if tasting the juice blind.

Only the smell of the peel gives away that it’s citrus. The juice tasted unpleasant, but it was so mild that it couldn’t disgust me. It reminded me most of mellon, more the greenish part, not mellon in a nice way.

Eating the peel is a bit bitter and the zest had some citrusy notes, but nothing attractive.

Taiwanica is known to be extremely tart. I’ve already written here about my doubts of Lenzi’s plants being a Taiwanica. First I thought it was mislabeled, and some sort of lemon or citron. But those would taste tart as well.

So a general question; is there anything that could lead to a citrus fruit having almost no taste? Malnutrition? Why the heck did my fruit have such bland taste? I didn't even know there could exist a citrus fruit this bland and with no citrussy flavor.

I could understand that some citrus fruits would lack sweetness when picked too early. This fruit I picked was definitely not very large, nor well developed, coming from a somewhat small and weak plant. But I would still expect tartness from underdeveloped fruits?








Also a correction on my earlier correction in this topic: The second Taiwanica plant I received from Lenzi just looked different because the leaves were small and immature, but later it grew leaves in the same shape and size as my first Taiwanica plant. So I was fooled by this. The fruits I have now come from a graft on Poncirus from the first plant that I received. I still have the second plant, but it’s very small.

[Peep]

Regarding Taiwanica from Lenzi:

Someone on the Hardy Citrus Europe facebook page mentioned also having a wrongly labeled Taiwanica from Lenzi.
Because the replacement I received looked the same as my "wrong" plant, and because I now know that I'm not the only one who has a "wrong" plant, I guess all Taiwanica from Lenzi is wrong.

This member on facebook also mentioned that it's likely a Palestinian lime, so I looked it up. Considering the pictures and descriptions I found, it seems to visually match my plant and also my "weird" experience of tasting this fruit and not experiencing any sourness. So it's a Palestinan lime, or similar from the sweet lime family. They will be removed from my collection.

Regarding my other Taiwanicas:

From the smell of the crushed leaves it seems that the cultivar with long and narrow leaves has more citrussy / lemony aroma than the cultivar from Quissac and the one I received from Ilya. These last two look and smell quite similar, so not sure if they are the same or if they are both seedlings that are genetically closely related. The narrow leaf cultivar would come from a somewhat different lineage I would guess, and more similar or the same as the Taiwanica(s) grown in the US.

Sadly it seems like it will take quite a while before my grafts will be large enough to carry fruits, so I won't be able to update much for a while.