Hello all, I've been lurking here for a while but never really posted. Though I'd say hi and show you my precious plants. Below is a picture of my Citrus aurantifolia (left) and Citrus bergamia (right). I also planted 8 seeds from big organic lemons I bought at the store (just out of curiosity) and they all germinated into cute little 4/6 leaf seedlings. Someone at the citrus nursery told me they will never blossom or have fruit, while on the internet I read that they will but that it takes several years. What's the story?

I'm especially fond of the Citrus bergamia, being a long time Earl Grey tea drinker (I must confess I am addicted to the bergamot scent). I would someday like to propagate it one way or another, what do you suggest?

Welcome to the forum SGF. Your nursery is wrong. Most lemons will take 3-5 years from seed to start producing, but they will produce.

As Lazz said your lemons will produce fruit and most likely just like the fruit they came from since most lemons are true to type (except for Meyer Lemons).

Granrey, the length of time depends on whether the plant is a seedling or whether it was propagated from an already fruiting tree.
A cutting or graft from a fruiting tree can produce flowers almost immediately. This applies to any citrus variety.
A seedling takes many years to flower. Three years is very optimistic, especially in your part of the world with a not ideal citrus climate. Here in the UK most seedlings take around 10 to 15 years to start producing.

Granrey, if you have a producing lemon tree and want to make your seedlings produce earlier, you can graft a piece of your mature tree onto the seedlings--that mature wood can produce fruit within a yr or 2. T-budding is not that difficult if you are interested, take a look at the tutorials on this forum.

thanks for the info.

Good news and bad news.
First the bad news: my bergamot has dropped all of its fruit. ):
I think it's a combination of too large temperature change when I brought it inside and being underwatered when I was outside the country. Now for the good news: there seem to be tiny buds of flowers popping up all over the tree. It's getting plenty of sunlight (window is south oriented) and the room temperature rarely drops below 20°C. My lime tree on the other hand has had flowers growing for a while now and they're about to pop open any time.



My ponderosa lemon seedlings are doing great (some better than others) and it's interesting to see different leaf characteristics on some of them. One has what looks like small "bubbles" on the leaf surface while the others are smooth and shiny. There's even one seed that grew into 4 seedlings, one of them having rather large pre-sectioned leaves (not sure what the correct term is where you have this small section of leaf before the big one. My bergamot also has it). You see it on the left if you look closely (sorry for the bad quality, took them in a hurry).

The lower section of the leaf is called a petiole. The size of the petiole in citrus varies according to the exact species.
Your four seedlings from one seed is by a process called 'polyembriony'. If one of the seedlings is different, it is because it is the result of sexual fertilisation - the others are clones of the parent plant. So it appears your seedling with the large petioles is probably a hybrid with the bergamot. In other words pollen from the bergamot has reached the Ponderosa flower and you are now growing a Pondermot. Probably a completely new variety, as it is an unlikely combination!
On the otherhand, the first few leaves on seedlings are sometimes not typical and revert to normal as the plant grows.
Mike aka Citrange