That's quite late for Cara cara. They start showing up here in the stores in late Nov - early Jan.

The Valencia's are closer to that time frame.

Per UCR, yours should be about the same as mine.

Quote:

Season of ripeness at Riverside: November to January

The variegated bud sports must vary quite a bit. The UCR fruit look quite different from mine & the color is much lighter.

http://www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/variegatedcaracara.html

Okay, you're right, Laaz. I had my big spreadsheet marked incorrectly for the Cara Cara. Going out right now to pick a few, yea!

... hope you find some seeds ..

Take some photos.

Okay, here's the tree:



Fruit (note typical snail damage, always battling snails/slugs):





And the fruit cut in half (look at the piece of fruit at 9 o'clock and you'll see the one seed):



Not as bright, deep pink as Laaz' fruit, but still pink. And, very sweet. Not quite as sweet as last year, might leave them on the tree another couple of weeks and see if they get any sweeter.

Beautiful !

My god you have some huge snails in Cali!

Thanks, Sanguinello. Not nearly as pink as Laaz' Cara Caras, but I bet they'll be a little pinker in a couple of weeks. I'll repost, then. I see Laaz' fruits have more seeds than I found in these two. I have about 30 different varieties on this slope, so not for lack of a lot of cross-pollination, but then, my tree is younger than Laaz' trees

Laaz, I do. They're horrid. I have two types of snails - regular pale brown snails, and these ginormous black snails. And, I think the black snails are taking over the brown snails. I should just buy stock in Sluggo and be done with it. I can barely keep up.

Try a bit of salt water in a super soaker water gun.

Yea, I could go snail hunting! What I need to do, is try copper tape or flashing around my trees, again. Supposedly it keeps them out, but I'm not so convinced. I'm going to give it a try again, though. They get into my stone fruit, too, and can ruin an entire tree full of plums, peaches, apricots overnight, as they don't have nearly as protective skins as citrus fruit do.

yes, I can see in the center the darker colour already ...

I will help you with the snails ...

Here in Europe only the brown snails from Spain are a problem.
The big black do no harm and are even very rare and should be protected ...

Patty, can you bring in a preditor at your place? Ducks love snails. http://www.ehow.com/info_8308027_kind-snails-do-ducks-eat.html
They'll convert snails into duck eggs for you...or into duck meat if you decide it was a terrible mistake.

Otherwise you could maybe bring in another snail
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/NE/decollate_snail.html