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Cold Hardy Citrus / Calamondin curiousities...
« on: May 04, 2025, 02:16:59 PM »
Hey all, I've mentioned this tree, but never pictured it. It's a thornless calamondin I've had for years. Since then I've realized the thornless trait is something that no other calamondin I've seen seem to share.
It seems like a normal calamondin otherwise in terms of appearance, fruit, leaves, so on and so forth. Though it's growth seems slower in the sense that it has tighter node spacing. It has survived freezes that killed all my other calamondin, citrus (except trifoliates) and even my in-ground hardy figs. Which is pretty notable.
My hope is to grow out the next round of seedlings from this tree and check if they are thornless too. If they are, I plan to distribute them to people interested in testing their hardiness or breeding them.
The thornless tree above is also the father of a batch of calamondin x calamondin seedling. I ended up with one clearly zygotic offspring with leaves that resemble calamondin but much more closely resemble kumquat.
Here are pictures from a few months back when I started putting the trees back outdoors. The zygotic offspring is thornless with more leaves and closer nodes than the rest, much like it's pollen donor. I have high hopes for this tree.
Here is a nucellar thorned calamondin which made up the majority of seedlings.
So... anyone else seen a thornless calamondin? Because if I've got something special here, I'd like to share some budwood with those who could make good use of it as I have had a very difficult time with rooting them compared to most anything else.
Edited: I also think it's worth mentioning that I got one zygotic survivor in a batch of 14 seedlings, which matches the 7% chance observed in the few studies available for reference. There was one other suspected zygotic seedling, but it died suddenly mid-winter.
It seems like a normal calamondin otherwise in terms of appearance, fruit, leaves, so on and so forth. Though it's growth seems slower in the sense that it has tighter node spacing. It has survived freezes that killed all my other calamondin, citrus (except trifoliates) and even my in-ground hardy figs. Which is pretty notable.
My hope is to grow out the next round of seedlings from this tree and check if they are thornless too. If they are, I plan to distribute them to people interested in testing their hardiness or breeding them.
The thornless tree above is also the father of a batch of calamondin x calamondin seedling. I ended up with one clearly zygotic offspring with leaves that resemble calamondin but much more closely resemble kumquat.
Here are pictures from a few months back when I started putting the trees back outdoors. The zygotic offspring is thornless with more leaves and closer nodes than the rest, much like it's pollen donor. I have high hopes for this tree.
Here is a nucellar thorned calamondin which made up the majority of seedlings.
So... anyone else seen a thornless calamondin? Because if I've got something special here, I'd like to share some budwood with those who could make good use of it as I have had a very difficult time with rooting them compared to most anything else.
Edited: I also think it's worth mentioning that I got one zygotic survivor in a batch of 14 seedlings, which matches the 7% chance observed in the few studies available for reference. There was one other suspected zygotic seedling, but it died suddenly mid-winter.
