The Tropical Fruit Forum

Conestoga 062 is a selection with reduced thorniness in the upper ends of flushes.

 

Isn't there a general tendency in citrus for reduced thorniness in the taller parts of the tree?

Madison citrus has the largest selection of whats availlablle (multiple finger limes and other australian citrus sp.)

red lime tasted awful to me, like pinesol similar to sweet lime.

As of now Australia's vibrant beautiful cultivars just aren't available stateside. Down under has vibrant crimson red, bright green and even yellow finger limes for sale - It's odd no big citrus repository has taken interest in as I don't think they're patented. Perhaps some industrious person could breed some or someone with the permits and certificates could laboriously import seeds but until then US stock of australian citrus is pretty undiverse.

I think the trouble is that the quarantine states (CA, AZ, TX, FL) are focused on juice crops, and well... Australian citrus are almost completely useless for that. So you can sometimes find them in the hobby/ornamental states, but not the commercial ag states, and it's hard to pass stuff in and out of the quarantine.

The miniature Conestoga selection I'm naming Mini Conestoga is smaller in all its characters, leaves, flowers, and fruits as well as the tree itself.

Isn't a miniature Conestoga a Prairie schooner?

Anyone have an idea which version Madison is offering?
https://madisoncitrusnursery.com/products/citremon-citrus-tree

I'm assuming it's Citremon B (CRC 1449), but I'm not certain.
https://citrusvariety.ucr.edu/crc1449

Took a flyer on one. They look like this.





If so, they sound zone 8ish, and probably won't make it overwinter without a lot of help.

Quote from: bussone on July 30, 2024, 03:43:19 PM

How do you guys do it?

Hello bussone!
I try to do this at the flower or button stage. If the fruit has already increased, the peduncle becomes hard. Probably in this case it is better to use some kind of tool, such as scissors.

I appreciate the advice.

Ohhhh, that's too bad. I can imagine how annoyed you must have been. Sorry about that.

*shrug*

Family habit. My mom once killed an artificial plant.

Quote from: bussone on June 25, 2024, 02:11:03 PM

Quote from: mikkel on June 24, 2024, 02:58:42 PM

I can only speak for myself, but Eremo hybrids do not flower in my climate. At least in temperate and cool climates, they seem rather unsuitable.

I had a complex eremo-hybrid that did flower in 7a... before it died.

I'm sorry to hear that, bussone.

How long did it live before its death? Did you manage to try its fruit or it died before the first crop?

Died before the crop. It made it through a winter, was doing okay, and then collapsed in late summer. I don't have a ton of luck with pot-based plants, though.

I can only speak for myself, but Eremo hybrids do not flower in my climate. At least in temperate and cool climates, they seem rather unsuitable.

I had a complex eremo-hybrid that did flower in 7a... before it died.

Yes, that -24C is evidently wrong. However it's still weird.

If we say Eremocitrus is hardy down to about the -5C range, I think we are correct. The trialed Valencia orange is also somewhere about that, kumquat maybe a bit better. But if I got it right, their hybrids took cold better than the Citrus parents. That means Eremocitrus and another Citrus has hybrids which don't have a hardiness between the range of the two, but better than either parent. Some genetic Eremo magic boosts hardiness instead of resulting an in-between cold tolerance of the two parents. It sounds stupid and I may be wrong about it but it seems to be true.

Now there may be some valid concerns about E. glauca and hybrids. It takes them a long time to start flowering and producing. That's a problem.
Also drought tolerance and gigantic root system are good in summertime, but if planted at a place like mine, with rainy winters paired with frosty weeks and warm weeks alternating, it might introduce some liability to rot. Of course, deep dormancy and a good rootstock can help. But it raises some serious doubts especially if the -12C absolute hardiness is unsure.

However Eremorange still seems to have enough good to offer as a future parent. Early ripening, zygotic tendency, pleasant tasting fruit, different leaf shape for easier recognition of successfull hybrids, deeper than average dormancy, drought and wind tolerance (the latter being very useful in winter), and this hardiness boosting habit of E. glauca which may or may not be true in the next generation. That and its real hardiness must be trialed. I want to give it a try just out of curiosity. So I aim to get one Eremorange this year and do the same as with the others on my mind. Get them, grow them in pot for a few years to make them strong and big enough, plant them out with shelter, experiment with the amount of protection needed, make all the crosses I can and grow the seeds to whatever becomes of them. And pick up some of the scientific approach of kumin to make it all work.

See you in 30 years, guys. 😀

Eremocitrus and poncirus may offer some dual benefit in places like Texas, where *both* winter freezes and summer drought are of concern in an area that otherwise would support citrus.

Quote from: bussone on May 13, 2024, 03:55:05 PM

If you get past the resin (something of a combination of pine tar and diesel),

I want to point out this isn't really the most accurate description.
If it were only a matter of them having some flavor of pine tar and diesel, I could still eat them. But it's worse than that.
They are sour and acidic but in a very bad way.

It's definitely not just an issue of being sour in the usual way (like a lemon). They have a horrid flavor that is makes it difficult to take more than one or two small bites, making it unapproachable. Very off-putting flavor. It's not just "bitter". Bitter flavor is not really the real issue. The word "bitter" is just used to describe the flavor, for lack of a better word.

I have eaten Chinotto sour orange, and those have bitterness than makes them somewhat difficult to eat, but poncirus has other things about its flavor that make it much worse.

There is a bitterness, although I suspect it resides mostly in the resin around the fruit, rather than in the fruit proper. But it's so hard to fully eliminate the resin that you basically just treat it as a component of the flavor. (Even after boiling and letting it sit)

Past the resin, I see a resemblance to sour orange, which I would also hardly eat out of hand. They are cooking oranges, not fresh-eating oranges. The big problem with poncirus as compared to sour orange is it that the rind of a sour orange has an overwhelmingly "orangey" quality that makes the rind useful, and poncirus does not. The juice of a sour orange mostly contributes sour. It's the rind where it shines. So poncirus gives you a slightly floral acidity without the strongly "orange" tones -- instead you get a piney resinousness and a bitter, acrid latex.

With enough boiling and enough sugar, you can get something acceptable from the juice.

It's a lot of work, but less of a hassle than dealing with the seediness of Alkekengi/physalis.

I am located in Washington state, which has no restrictions on importing citrus, but I would still prefer to only source this from someone who is not in a HLB quarantine area.

I'm looking for either Prague budwood or a small grafted tree that can easily be shipped. Happy to pay any reasonable price.

I grafted some more than a year ago on a few multi-graft trees, and the grafts never grew (also never died!) but I'm tired of waiting for those to either grow or die. I got the scions from Stan McKenzie but he hasn't had any available this year on his Etsy shop unless I missed it.

Give him a call. Sometimes he has stuff that's not listed. I got my Prague from him that way.

I've never had the (mis)fortune of trying a trifoliate orange. When I read about poncirus as food, it is usually compared to oranges proper. Is there anything distinctive about the taste, smell or aroma of trifoliate oranges beyond its bitter taste and inferiority to commercial citruses?

If you get past the resin (something of a combination of pine tar and diesel), the remaining flavor I perceive is lemon, perhaps with a touch of grapefruit. (Which is probably the acidity with a touch of bitterness from remaining resin) I agree with other commenters that it is a floral lemon. (It's similar to Meyer Lemon to me, or maybe citron)

If you twisted my arm, I would buy that the juice has something in common with sour orange. But the aroma of the rind very much does not.