Fast Flowering Shikuwasha citrus tree From Okinawa

[Millet]

My shikuwasha citrus tree, native of Okinawa, flowered with 2 flowers at just 9 inches tall. Grown from from seed.

[mikkel]

That is interesting. How old is it?

[Millet]

I don't remember the exact date when I planted the seed, probably 8 to 10 months old.

[deRoode]

Very interesting! There is this one article where the Japanese are using it as a rootstock to induce earlier flowering in hybrids, probably for this reason.

I am lucky to have gotten some seeds as well, so I hope to see some flowers the next months.

[Millet]

Looking around the Internet I think the proper spelling is  Shikuwasa

[Peep]

Looking around the Internet I think the proper spelling is  Shikuwasa

There are multiple spelling versions used; Shekwasha / Shikwasa / Shikuwasha / Shikuwasa / Shiikuwasha / Shiquasa / Shequasa

All of these can be seen used. It's hard to say which ones are correct or which could be a incorrect translation or wrong combination of spelling :p

Here in Europe the most common to me is Shekwasha

[caladri]

Even in Japanese there are a lot of different ways to render the name, so don't worry too much about the spelling   There's unfortunately also two common renderings in English orthography in academic literature which makes following research a little tedious sometimes. And yes, it's one of the rootstocks that there's a lot of research which shows that it imparts earlier flowering to grafted material, which in addition to hardiness makes it a pretty appealing rootstock. A fair amount of citrus was planted on it in north Florida last century as a trial, but its popularity in industry was never really there. I think it was also seen as promising because of tolerance of calcareous soil, but I'm less sure my memory on that is correct. It's an appealing rootstock. I assume that it also doesn't show the latent incompatibility with some mandarins Poncirus does, but I'm not sure I've ever read any research on that.

It's also an appealing breeding partner for all of those reasons, and also because of substantial genetic diversity. Plus, for as much as people prize them for their use when green and for the pungent (and stimulating) peels, if left for the acid to mellow, the fruits are juicy and rich in flavour, although not quite as rich as the similarly orthographically challenging and larger-fruited Citrus oto.