I did some bark grafts yesterday. A friend had a very large tree that the rootstock had overgrown the scion. The tree can't be any more than 4 years old as it had a texas saxon/bechnel label on it. The rootstock was about 3+inches thick. The rootstock was also flowering and had purple flowers. Must be rough lemon? The rootstock fruit looked large and yellow like swingle but surely swingle doesn't have purple flowers like a lemon? I thought saxon/bechnel was using C35 citrange, must be using others as well.

I grafted atlas honey mandarin, 88-2 lee x nova and 15-150 lee x orlando. I bet in two years I'll taste my first fruit of 15-150 and atlas seedless honey mandarin! Anyone hears of atlas seedless honey mandarin?

James Frances who I got the budwood for the atlas honey says it is seedless from one branch on a tree that atlas grew. We shall see.

Here is what Urban Harvest has to say about atlas honey:

Atlas Honey Mandarin The Honey is also called the Murcott, and it is from an old Tangor variety, a hybrid between a Mediterranean and a King Mandarin. The fruit has a deep orange exterior, is thin skinned and has a glossy texture. The Honey Mandarin is slightly flat in shape with no neck. It is very juicy, peels and segments easily and has many seeds. Fully ripe late November, so start tasting early November. Fairly good freeze tolerance.

My 6-15-150 graft produced a few fruit this year. Since it was mid November and they are supposed to be ripe by this time I decided to try one out. The flavor was pretty darn good. It was tangy and sweet with a nice balance of acid to sugars. The fruit was firm, easy to peel with a thin rind and had only a few seeds. It has done pretty well in my yard seeing 19 degrees so far since I grafted it out. It could be a stand out performer for those in zone 8 or maybe in warm 7b.

Here's a couple of pics:






I can't remember if I posted this already but here's some good information about this variety:

USDA 6-15-150 mandarin(VI 691):
First distribution
of buds from the CCPP: September 2010.
Also known as
‘USDA 15-150’, this cultivar is a hybrid of ‘Lee’ mandarin
and ‘Orlando’ tangelo. The cross is believed to have occurred
sometime in the 1960s or 1970s and was developed in Florida
by C. J. Hearn. The CCPP obtained ‘USDA 6-15-150’ in 2006
from the USDA-ARS Horticultural Research Laboratory
in Ft. Pierce, Florida. According to the donor, characteristics
of this selection under Florida growing conditions include
outstanding taste, good internal color, and problems with
degreening. This hybrid is also reported to have the distinction
of being the most cold-hardy scion hybrid to be considered
for release from the USDA breeding program and can be best
compared to Satsuma in hardiness but has much better overall
characteristics than other cold tolerant varieties.
Results from fruit quality evaluations of ‘USDA 6-15-150’
conducted in Florida indicate that the fruit are medium in
size, very easily peeled by hand, pleasant tasting, and should
have less than 10 seeds in the absence of cross pollination.
Further, harvest usually requires clipping of the fruit, although
the cultivar is not quite as good as Sunburst in this respect.
External fruit color at maturity is brilliant orange in contrast
to the interior, which is a deep shade of orange reminiscent
of ‘Fallglo’ tangerine. Yields for ‘USDA 6-15-150’ in Florihave been consistent and are good to excellent as long as
the fruit are not left hanging on the tree. The harvest season
for this cultivar in Florida should occur from the middle of
November through the end of the calendar year.
The first evaluation of trees of ‘USDA 6-15-150’ grown
in California occurred in 2009. Based on the 2009 and 2010
results at both Exeter and Riverside demonstration blocks,
fruit were already above legal maturity by mid-October at
Exeter and mid-October to early November at Riverside, but
the external rind color was still very green and did not reach
color break until about a month later at Exeter. Two samples
of 10 fruit of ‘USDA 6-15-150’ collected from Exeter and Riverside for three sample dates in 2009 and four sample dates
in 2010 had an average of 11.8 seeds per fruit. The fruit from
both locations at all sample dates were only slightly flattened
in shape (average length/width ratio of 0.90) with medium
orange flesh color. The four-year-old trees in Riverside have
medium vigor and are approximately 5.0 ft. in height with a 5 ft. diameter with a spreading growth habit.

Switching gears to the Honey mandarins and Ponkans (Pon Koa). My Atlas Honey is good but does produce seeds. Maybe James Frances has the true seedless sport. To complicate things even further when talking about Pon koa, Murcotts, Honey mandarins, California Honey mandarins & Chinese Honey. There is actually an Atlas Koa variety also that can get thrown in the mix. Here is what I found out when exchanging emails about Atlas Koa when I grafted mine around seven years ago.

"Dr. Atlas obtained seeds from the Jamison's Pon Koa, which had been growing here for 40 years, or more. He made seedlings and each seedling was then grafted to trifoliata. Some gave dry fruit, and by accident, mine was the best one. The Jamison heirs are annoyed that he named it Atlas Pon Koa. The fruit of this Atlas Koa is very similar to Ponkan but the Atlas Koa is larger. His (Atlas) Honey Mandarin was a bud sport that he had Treesearch Farms propagate. It is good, but seedy. Entirely different from the Pon Koa."

So apparently Atlas Koa is a seedling of Jaminsons Pon Koa and the Atlas Honey Mandarin is a sport of Pon Koa.

Oh boy. SO confusing. I will say, the Lee mandarin has been a great parent for a lot of very nice hybrids. So much so, I decided to plant a Lee in my orchard, next to the Lee x Nova hybrid (think I also have Nova in there somewhere, not good that I'm losing track, need to update my map and spreadsheet!) Next time I'm at the UCR Collection, I'm going to ask to taste test both the Nova and the Lee, if they're ripe at the time of the visit. I'd like to compare them to the USDA 88 Lee x Nova, and the 6-15-50.

If the atlas seedless honey mandarin is indeed synonymous with Murcott per the Urban Harvest's description is it not also referred to as "Tango", a seedless version of the W. Murcott mandarin which was released by the University of California’s Citrus Breeding Program 2007ish?


Best,

Skinn30a

I checked my topwork out after the 18F freeze last week. Looked undamaged to me.

I also tasted an Atlas Pong Koa which had few seeds. Don't know if that is the same as Atlas seedless ponkin.

Purchased 2 atlas seedless @6 years ago at the Harris County Master Gardeners fruit tree sale. Their brochure description described them as honey mandarin and many seeds. I assumed they had obtained California Honey, as I already had Florida Honey, and their description was right on for California honey. First time fruited, the fruits were sweet, medium juice, little to no acid or richness, and seedless. I had them in pots.

Knew they were not California honey. I already had Xie Shan, Miyagawa, and a very sweet Owari. Don't have any extra room at Texas home so gave both to family members. I prefer high sugar/high acid and already had enough high sugar/low acid varieties.

Family put them in the ground. They have been producing very sweet, very rich, juicy, seedless fruit yearly. Family member told me many that tastes the fruit, ask him could I get them a tree.

So yes, there is a seedless variety that is excellent. I think the Atlas that is floating around now is not the seedless variety.

On an ending note, I had been reading on the forums how good Ponkan was and was thinking of getting rid of something to replace with a Ponkan. Sure would be ironic if I got rid of 2 seedless Ponkans.