Author Topic: I have 3 Australian Finger limes only one budding?  (Read 763 times)

CarolinaZone

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I have 3 Australian Finger limes only one budding?
« on: June 06, 2022, 07:52:29 PM »
Are there any official varieties? One of mine is like tree and it is sending out buds. The other two are "bushy" and super spiny but no buds. What gives?

W.

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Re: I have 3 Australian Finger limes only one budding?
« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2022, 11:06:34 PM »
Yes, there are several finger lime varieties. Very few of them have made it to the United States, where our selection typically consists of either generic green or generic red types. I think the varieties they have developed in Australia have all been selected for fruit color and/or quality, not growth rate. Your finger limes could be growing at different rates due to the rootstock or some other factor. You may have been sold some type of hybrid or mislabeled plant. I have grown all my finger limes from seed; they have all stayed very small, bushy, and thorny.

pagnr

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Re: I have 3 Australian Finger limes only one budding?
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2022, 02:28:01 AM »
Photos of your plants will help to compare with what varieties other members have.
It is not too hard to tell Citrus australasica, the wild Finger Lime species from hybrids.
" Finger Limes " outside of Australia have often been hybrids, until more recently when real Finger Lime selections became available.

citrange

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Re: I have 3 Australian Finger limes only one budding?
« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2022, 04:33:37 PM »
Don't forget that Australian Finger Limes have a quite different history from conventional citrus species and varieties. The FLs have really only been selected recently from wild plants which have then been given names - as yet there has been little if any breeding to encourage and select desirable traits. Plants available outside Australia are also quite likely to have been grown from seed or propagated from a seedling and so can be variable.
Conventional citrus are not found wild in the forms that we generally know. They have been selected and propagated for hundreds of years and named varieties are now exact clones of each other with very little variation between individual plants.

pagnr

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Re: I have 3 Australian Finger limes only one budding?
« Reply #4 on: June 11, 2022, 05:40:30 AM »
Hybridisation of Fingerlimes dates back about 100 years.
Citrus virgata,  the Sydney Hybrid probably originated from close planting of C. australasica Finger Lime and C.australis Round Lime at the Sydney Botanic Garden ??
The two species don't converge in the wild, even though they are found not so far apart, maybe 70 km or less.
The Faustrimedin dates back to 1911, a hybrid between Microcitrus australasica and Calamondin.
The Eremolemon dates back to at least the 1920's. Eremocitrus X Myer is supposed for that one.
The Faustrime, Microcitrus australasica X limequat is probably from about the same period.
That was just about it for a while, possibly until the Blood Lime and Sunrise Lime were developed in the early 80's.
Some European '' Finger Limes" are clearly hybrids, judging from their odd shaped fruit or robust foliage.
Saga University in Japan also bred a lot of Microcitrus X Microcitrus and Microcitrus X Citrus hybrids.
If anyone can add to this list, that would be great.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2022, 08:16:01 PM by pagnr »