What a trip! (I mean this in both the travel and
intense experience meanings.)
The California Rare Fruit Growers, Orange County chapter,
had an opportunity to visit the Citrus Variety Collection at
the University of California at Riverside.

There were about 32 of us and since none of us are
VIPs like Millet and Citrus Joe, I expected to ride
in a tram towed by a tractor
with the opportunity to photograph the trees and
smell the blossoms.
Instead the curator of the Citrus Variety Collection,
Dr. Tracy Kahn,
led us on a walk through the orchard.
Not only that, she picked fruit and cut pieces for us to taste!
Soon there was juice dripping off my chin and
my fingers were too sticky to take notes.
I was too busy keeping up with Dr. Kahn and begging
for more chunks of citrus to take notes anyway.
I saw citrus relatives I have never heard of before,
much less seen, and I got to taste one of them.

We ate some Yosemite Gold, Tahoe Gold, Shasta Gold, and Gold Nugget.
And we tried some Oroblanco Grapefruit, Melogold rapefruit, Star Ruby Grapefruit and Cocktail Grapefruit,
which is not really a grapefruit.

Benny is right, Seedless Kishu Mandarin is excellent,
though small.
I got to taste 88-2 again, and it was again excellent.
88-2 is from Florida and may be released here
in a few years.

I have a lot more to relate,
but I am coming down from my citruholic high,
and need to get some rest now. More later.

If I want to evaluate the best potential taste of citruses, Lindcove would be the place to go. So any taste results down there are positively biased in flavor which means that they will only taste worse over here, except perhaps for the sour types of citruses such as lemons and limes.

If I want to evaluate the best potential taste of citruses that can be achieved for northern California, I simply go with Gene Lester citrus tour. The taste results in his citrus farm is negatively biased. Which means that if citruses tasted good there, they would taste even much better in our area. So I prefer to go to Gene Lester's citrus tasting than the Lindcove. So far my recommendations as to what will taste very good in our area has all been correct based on my taste tests from Gene Lester's citrus farm.

I may visit my friends at UCR one of these days and go to Lindcove or on one of the public tours or fruit festivals. This is to take notes so that I would have first-hand knowledge on what to recommend for my friends living in the south. I visited a place in Southern California when we took an RV trip touring the entire Western State, but in that spot all their citruses tasted excellent than anywhere else.

Nicely Done! I think everyone on this forum needs to see the variety collection! Kind of overwhelming no? So many trees, so much fruit. Got so excited I tasted some rootstock fruit by accident. Blah!

The 88-2 is Good. Tango is just as good if not better and available in June in budwood from CCPP.

All my Australian seeds are sprouting now from my visit to UCR in Feb.

Glad you got to go!

Citrusboy (Marc) - I'm particularly interested to know whether your Microcitrus inodora seedlings will have paired spines. Two thorns at each leaf joint. This seems to be a recessive trait that disappears with hybrids. My inodora seeds from Riverside all produced narrow leaved hybrids with single thorns. Unless of-course they sent me seeds from the wrong tree. The seedlings are now ten years old, about 3' tall and have never yet flowered.
Mike (aka Citrange)

Citrange,
Most if not all of my seedlings from UCR seeds of Microcitrus inodora have paired spines. Maybe it was a good year.
Terry

Hmm. Only 2 of my Inodora seedling have just sprouted. When they get big enough I will let you know. I mean... JUST sprouted.... Shouldn't you be measuring in meters citrange!

That depends who I'm talking to!
Although feet & inches aren't taught in schools in the UK any more, the move to metric measurements was never completed. So road signs, for instance, are still in miles.
Personally, I'm old enough to have been brought up using imperial, but with a science background I used metric for work. I'm happy with either system.
So, as most people on this forum are from USA, I return to the old units! On my web-site I try and use both.

My two Microcitrus Inodora both have paired thorns. Although I am not 100 PERCENT sure, I believe the Inodora that I have, came from the very same source as the seeds Terry has. If so, then I know the reason that they are not hybrids, but have actually come from a pure sourced Inodora. Terry did you personally get your seeds from UCR or did they come from CJ?

Millet

Millet,
I personally got my seeds from UCR about two years ago.
Terry