Hello everyone, it has been a while since I have been here, and even longer since I posted.

I just wanted to share an interesting occurrence that I have up here in zone 6b. I planted a 1 year old trifoliate outside 4 summers ago with a live or let die attitude, wanting eventually to have fruit. Well, it flowered for the first time this spring, much to my surprise. Even more surprising, over half of its approximately 30 flowers are on the lower branches.

The tree is approximately 8 feet high, and up until this spring, I had never pruned any of the lower branches at all. Early this spring (maybe even late winter), in an effort to clean up under the tree and not look like I had been in a cat fight, I pruned off the lower branches up to about the 18 inch height. At that time, the tree was very much still in its "dormant" stage.

The lowest two branches that remained after pruning later produced about 15 flowers. If you measured from the base of the tree up the trunk and then down the branch to where the flowers started, the measurement is approximately 3 linear feet. I was extremely surprised at these flowers. The remainder of the flowers occurred further up the tree, approximated at about the midway point of the tree, but on branch locations that would likely set them away from the base of the trunk at about 8-10 feet (as the ant travels). Curiously, none all the way at the top of the tree.

It makes me wonder about those branches that I removed earlier this year, and if they would have had any flowers this year. It also reminded me of a post from Laaz on one of his trees (finger lime, I think) that, once it flowered, also had flowers on lower branches.

I guess I was assuming that the lower portion, due to the node count issue, would never flower/fruit. My long term plan was to back graft the top of the tree lower on the trunk once I hit the node count, but now I may not need to do this. A few of the flowers have dropped completely, but others have small fruitlets, so hopefully I will get at least one fruit to reach maturity.

Does anyone have an explanation for this situation? Please note also that I only get one to two flushes per year on this tree due to the environment.

Thanks,

Barbara

I was wrong, it was a faustrime.

Laaz wrote:

Here is a bit of a mystery. We all know that MOST citrus flower and fruit after a certain node count is reached. At that time, the flowering will begin on the top branches where the node count is the highest. Bring into play the Faustrime. I have multiple seedlings & all of them start flowering from the lowest branch on the tree, not the top. Anyone have any opinions on this? Below is one of the trees, it is two years from seed & only the first few branches from the ground are flowering. Nothing on the top of the tree. Close up of the blooms. This is the same branch as the first photo. Complete tree

I have a Poncirus that bloomed for the first time last year. The flowers were only on a low branch which I accidently damaged while trying to graft. So it became a partial girdle.

This year that same branch bloomed profusely, while higher branches had only a few flowers.

Thank you for your input, Hardyvermont. This is curiouser and curiouser...

Barbara