It was mentioned here that if you leave the fruits long on the tree, the seeds will develop fully and could affect the growth or development of the next batches of fruits. So the advice has been to harvest the fruits when the second batches of fruits are forming.

More than a year ago, I left many calamondins and mandarinquat fruits on the tree to track as to what really is going to happen and I sampled those batches each step of the way. I had bumper crops by the way from both cultivars, and have fruits and blooms year round. A week ago, I harvested about 3 bucketfuls of calamondins, but those harvested fruits are just a side topic, but I watched carefully the specific batches that I let them stay on the tree for more than a year.

The first time when those batches start to turn color, from green to yellow green (calamondin) or slight orange (mandarinquat), I opened a few and they have full sized very plump seeds within them. The skin then turned dark orange during the coldest nights of the winter, and I sampled the fruits and examined the seeds, they are smaller and slightly shriveled, but still a little bit plump. When the warming days of late spring came, the skin color turned greenish again, although they still have their orange tinge, a process called re-greening which is commonly observed with other citruses. The seeds remained the same though. Some of the fruits have dried portion in them, but most remained juicy. Some fruits also fell off.

Come today, October 19, 2007, that is, one year and and 3 months after they were first sampled, the fruits are slightly bigger. About 20% from those special batches fell to the ground with vast majority still hanging on the tree. When I sampled the fruits this time, they are still juicy, but then there were no viable seeds. What used to be seeds are now tiny shriveled remnants of seeds. The fruits can be considered seedless. Big juicy seedless mandrinuats and calamondins. The seeds seemed to atrophy and their contents reabsorbed back by the plants. Thus there is something wrong with the original theory that the seeds can be a drain. In this case, the reverse happened. At least, in the case of my Calamondins and Mandarinquats. So anybody have experienced the same? Perhaps we need to revisit the proper speculation in this matter. Speculations could be wrong but what I witnessed first hand is irrefutable evidence for me.

I was trying to collect seeds and found no viable ones from the old batches of fruits that have aged more than one season.

So I collected seeds from this years batch and they are all plump.