No, the trees grown on from seed taken from store bought
Citrus generally will not produce fruit as good in quality as
the tree that produced the original fruit will be.
The above premise is why a nurseryman that has been
around Citrus for many years will take seed from fruit
and grow them on principally to be their rootstock for
them. Of which some of the Citrus growing nurseries
that sell standard sized trees still are using this method
to some degree. The nice thing for people is that most
store bought Lemons do have a Lemon rootstock parent
and the same is true for several but not all Limes as well.
This Lemon on Lemon or Lime on Lime concept may not
be the case for fruit from trees that are semi-dwarfs or are
bona fide dwarf plants however. Then again what Citrus
we buy in a grocery store that are California grown under
the Sunkist label are mostly from standard sized trees.
To answer a PM that was sent to us two days ago, the
fruit from the Santa Teresa are all off the tree and we
did not save any of the seed. Even if we had saved the
seed the seedlings that sprout from that two-plant put
together marriage of that semi-dwarf Santa Teresa scion
budded onto what appears to be rough Lemon rootstock
would not yield true to type Santa Teresa seed in the first
place. Had we grown the seed on in a nursery we would
call those juvenile plants Santa Teresa mulatto seedlings.
We can take the seed from the fruit and grown them on
and hope for a plant that may be as good as the parent
plant or in some very limited cases be a better quality
fruiting tree for us but in most cases the fruit will not
be as good as the parent plant. Even with parent plants
that are on their own roots this can also be the case as
after several trials I have yet to grow a seedling from
our old form Meyer Lemon that I felt was as good as
the parent tree is. I've had some seedling trees that I
felt the green fruit was better and I've had some trees
hold the fruit longer that I felt were slightly better than
the old tree but across the board, no, I have not yielded
a seedling that I felt was as good overall as the parent
tree for us is. I will say no one that has been given
seedling offspring from our tree has ever complained
about their tree along with the comment that their tree
produces fruit tastier than are seen in the stores. The
latter case is more due to our climate and growing
environs than due to the tree itself.
We have been known to take seedlings as such and use
them as rootstocks for the original scionwood and felt
we may be able to improve the Lemon or whatever else
as a plant to be grown here. This thinking is part of the
old Luther Burbank applied philosophy in action. We
did it with some Mandarins that were originally grafted
onto Troyer citrange and used seed from the "name"
fruit to become our rootstock line later for the old
Fancher Creek Clementine Mandarin, not to be
confused with the Algerian Tangerine as one is a slip
skin and the other is not. This is one way how we can
breed into the plant more vigor, add in some cold
tolerance or improve the cold resistance for our area
in the named form.
Production wise for many years the Eureka was the
number one shipping, fresh market selling, Lemon in
California. The Lisbon gained much of its popularity
in the 70's and 80's with several new grove plantings
around here. People have their own taste preference
for these two Lemons but for commercial purposes the
Eureka has a longer history of fresh market excellence
going for it than the Lisbon grown commercially in
California does.
is it the same looking and tasting lemon
No, the Eureka does not taste the same as a Lunario. The
Eureka is more sprite, cleaner in taste on the palette and
does not have the oily feel and heavy pungent aftertaste
of the Lunario.
Jim
[ A disclaimer of sorts. We have been around and involved
with Citrus on pretty much a daily basis for a number of
years either as an in ground production or an outdoor
container grower, helping out in my spare time in an
experimental capacity for an historical nursery for free,
for no renumeration, that has two references, the founder
of the nursery itself listed in the content and one indirect
citation listed in the Literature Cited section of the Citrus
Industry Vol. 5, as well as being in a research position
involving Citrus. We have our own views of Citrus that
are not going to be mainstream in intellect with several
people in this forum as well as other online forum format
hosts. Two in particular, although one we do and always
will have high regard for in spite of some of them and one
forum host we have no use for period.
We will not answer every private message to come in to
us and we are not going to send seed or plant material
to Florida for any reason. Part of the rationale is it is not
entirely legal for us to do it at the present time, so if we
mention in a post we have a Citrus that no one else has
access to or is not available yet in your area, please do
not ask us if we can give you some of it. It simply "ain't
going to happen"! ]
