The Lemon - 4
The peel of the lemon varies a great deal in thickness, as influenced by variety, rootstock, vigor of growth, and environmental factors. If a lemon is allowed to remain on the tree until it begins to change in color from green to yellow the peel slowly commences to decrease in thickness, and continues to do so as long as the fruit remains on the tree. A lemon peel is considered to be thin if it measures less than 3mm, medium if 3 to 5 mm, and thick if over 5 mm. Lemon peels seldom are more than 7mm thick. - Millet

I have lemon that when you let it keep on the tree, it keeps getting larger, but the increase in fruit size is primarily due to the greater thickness of the rind. The best time to harvest it when the rind thickness is still not that much is when they completely become yellow, that is sometime in January. From January to May, the fruit increases but so the rind thickness.

Commercial Citrus Industry research and the University of California at Riverside, would not agree with your lemon tree. - Millet

I have proof that shows otherwise. I am very observant. And my plants would never lie to me. There is absolutely no financial gains for me for posting this, in fact there is no other motive except to share and stir in others how to explain such deviations from the rules. Only then can we advance knowledge and have deeper understanding about citruses.

I will pick a lisbon lemon fruit tomorrow and hopefully have a digital camera to show that the industry's written facts are not accurate, according to my lemon. They are good generalizations but nature always have quirks to humble us with what we think we know.

We're having a barbecue tomorrow, and perhaps can enlighten somebody on how to explain why my lemon is not behaving according to the written facts.

I have not noticed any thinning of the peel (though it is possible), but mine have definitely gotten larger--they are as big as naval oranges, and still very juicy.

Joe i would agree with millet & UCR as to the normal production of lemons. You being in a different environment may have a different outcome. My lemons are about on par with what UCR has described.

Joe, I'm glad you brought this up about your lemon. In making biochemical and physiological studies of lemon fruits, it is critical to know both their AGE and their SIZE before it can intelligently considered. A picture of your lemon will not provide us with much information, unless we know (1) the variety, (2) age of the fruit, (3) HOW LONG it as been hanging on the tree after it turned yellow. (4) comparison with a sample lot of other lemons from your tree. What would be needed from your tree is a representative lot of lemons that were all set by your tree at the same time (so they would be the same age) and then a measurement taken of a lemon from the lot every week for three months to determine whether the peel was getting thinner or not, as the fruit continued to hang on the tree after turning yellow. This would be the only way to show whether your tree's lemons were getting thicker or thinner the longer they hung on your tree. Just picking one fruit without knowing all the above would not have much value. However, it would be interesting just knowing the thickness of the peel on the lemon you are talking about in millimeters. The industry standard determining whether it would be thin, medium or thick is given above. Thanks for your input, it makes for interesting discussion. . - Millet

You know me, I test my fruits for their keeping abilities and keep track of them. I am quite adept at how statistical comparisons are to be made.

I will do a formal tracking of them starting this November and keep track of them until June. I will sample perhaps every month from the same batch of fruits. I'll keep track of two clusters.

One possible reason why my lemon behaved this way is that they are in the 80-n-1 citrus tree, and those lemons have at least 2 interstems.

Not trying to hijack this post, but...

80-N-1 citrus tree now. WOW!

What's the height and the spread of the tree? I love to be your neighbor, hoping your tree and a few branches and fruits grows over onto my side of the fence.

I think one possible reasons of why my lisbon fruits have increased rind thickness could be due to lower supply of P towards the Lisbon fruits.

My speculation is that the Lisbon fruits are still "growing" or filling up, as I observed the fruit size and weight increasing through time, the longer I let the fruits stay on the tree. From the time the fruits are first ready, they have thinner rinds. As I let them stay longer, the fruits are more exposed to cold, and it could be a temporary natural ecological response to increase rind thickness to protect the seeds. Now spring time cometh, and the tree growth flushes and blooms have pulled away the needed P to various other cultivars wanting to ride the spring wave of growth and reproduction. This can aggravate the still growing lisbon fruits resulting in temporary P deficiency, thereby increasing further the rind thickness. This may not have happened if the tree were just a simple one cultivar graft, as translocation between source and sink would have simple exchanges. But with 79 other cultivars on the same tree, perhaps we could have interesting interactions and I got observations quite to the contrary.

Anyway, these are just speculations, nothing definite, as no one else have been crazy enough to repeat multi-grafting a tree to such extremes, at least not yet... I have other friends headed into that direction as well. So maybe we could have other interesting observations not in the books yet.

Joe
Every time you mention an 80 in one tree I get this picture in my mind of the old Frankenstein movies where the body parts are loosely assembled. Egor, it lives!
Just kidding Joe, I would love to see pictures when it is producing fruit.
Karl

Karl, perhaps this year, I will have 40 kinds of fruits. Last year, I got about 28 kinds of fruits when it was a 57-n-1 tree. About 23 cultivars were added last fall and this spring, it takes time for them to bear fruit, like 18 months from grafting, just on the average. Sometimes they do bear fruit the moment they were budded (flowers sprouted instead of stems).

The Lemon - 5
When is a lemon mature? As applied to lemon fruits, the terms "immature" and "mature" are rather vague. The generally accepted maturity test is based on the availability of extractable juice. According to California and Arizona a lemon that contains a minimum of 25 percent juice by volume is mature, regardless of its color or its size. Customer demand would not make it profitable to pick all fruits just as soon as they contain that amount of juice; they are therefore picked according to size. Lemons are sometimes picked dark green, green, light green, silver, light silver, light yellow, yellow and dark yellow (tree ripe), and then colored up while in storage. Commercially, lemons are not picked because they have attained a certain color, they are picked according to size. Some fruits are picked before they have reached the required picking size, due to the fact that they have already started to turn color, and have therefore stopped, or practically stopped growing. These are usually sent to the products plant. - Millet