I brought home a tree of each today. Anyone have any experience with either?

XieShan, could very easily be the sweetest satsuma in existance. The fruit produces a ton of sugar. The sugar to acid ratio frequently reaches 18 to 1. Eat XieShan like candy. - Millet

Hey Mr. Texas,
A couple of quick questions:
1, what size Xieshan did you get?
2, how much was it?
3, where did you get it from?

I would love to get a hold of a Mandarin that is considered that sweet.
Thanks!
Darren

They were 2 gallon, about 2 feet tall and $12.50 wholesale. I've seen a nursery on the web selling them out of Lake Charles, La. You might try them.
http://stores.homestead.com/ecolage/-strse-201/xie-shan-satsuma-tree/Detail.bok

XieShan is sometimes like Vainiglia Sanguigno. It can be sweet but bland with no sprightly flavors unlike Page or Pixie. One of the reasons why the sugar to acid ratio can be that high is due to the lack of acid. If numerator gets smaller, the ratio becomes illogically large to get any meaningful interpretation.

XieShan can indeed have some spright when the weather is right for your area and that would be truly outstanding. Performance could vary year to year, backyard to backyard. In a way, it behaves similarly to Miyagawa and the other satsumas in general. There are bad years and good years, depending upon what happened during various stages of fruit development.

Good to see you back, Joe, hope all is well.

Joe, I thought about you most all day today. Glad to see you back. Your a BIG part of this forum. - Millet

Thanks Harvey and Millet. Will be back soon. Still some struggling to do. Everyone's in the family too busy trying to catch up.

Glad to hear from you Joe-- we all know family is first, but we do miss you!

Miho & Seto somehow come from it. Don't know anything else about the tree, but the few things I can find about Miho & Seto sound promising.

I believe someone mentioned that he liked the Miyagawa at the 2006 Lindcove Citrus tasting.* Felt along with his counterpart, it was one of the five best tasting Mandarins on that particular day. I prefer flavor over sweetness which is why I was not overly impressed with the Xie Shan which I felt was too bland for my taste. In my notes I wrote sweet but may be insipid. I want some taste from a Mandarin and when I get a mouthful of flavor as soon as I crunch into a segment, it does not matter to me how overly sweet the fruit is but...to each his or her own.

Note: where the Xie Shan was grown there were a few nutrient issues as seen in the plant that may have led or contributed to the fruit not being as flavorful as they may or could be later on in time with a nutrient or two and a soil correction.

* I realize that we had wasted everyone's time once again with our post in this forum after that one tasting, which precluded any comment from us again on that subject until now.

Snickles

Hello,

after reading articles about "Xie Shan" on this forum, I am interested on this variety, but in: http://www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/xieshan.html
they mentioned that:
"Thomas Chao, in the cited publication, states that 'Xie Shan' is a Chinese translation of a Japanese cv called 'Wakayama'.

Is it possible?

I asked, becouse goku wase satsuma"Wakayama" is pretty common in our collections - I also have one - it is possible sweetest satsuma here. And there is no chance to obtain "Xie Shan" in our region, so if it is the same variety, there is no need for me to looking for "Xie Shan".

Radoslav, you can contact Dr. Thomas Chao directly and ask him. He can be reached here:

Dr. Thomas Chao
Cornell University
USDA Agricultural Research Service
Plant Genetic Resource Dept.
6030 W. North Street
Geneva, NY 14456

Telephone: 315-787-2454
FAX: 315-787-2339