Citrus Growers Forum

Millet · Posted: Fri 05 Nov, 2010 8:53 pm

Polarbear, my guess is after your California visit with Gene, you must have acquired a ton of new information, and more especially, a large multitude of photographs that could keep you busy on your web site for a year. It is always nice hearing from you, take care. - Millet (Joma, sinun on aina suuri assit)

Polarbear · Joined: 23 Oct 2008 Posts: 14 Location: Kotka, Finland

MarcV wrote:

...will you also be adding the blood clementines?

Short answer: No. You have stated the reasons. I try to be careful with info and pictures. I have no pictures and no info on blood clementines. There are other blood mandarins as well that I would very much like to have. I have never seen a blood mandarin of any kind myself.

Lemandarangequatelo · Citruholic Joined: 01 Mar 2010 Posts: 485 Location: UK

Polarbear thank you for the great information regarding Persian limes, it was very interesting.

As for saving your website for offline use as a pdf, unfortunately I do not know of a free easy tool to do this. I tried using the website downloader called QuadSucker, but it did not work on your website for some reason. If I find a way I will let you know.

Polarbear · Joined: 23 Oct 2008 Posts: 14 Location: Kotka, Finland

Millet wrote:

Polarbear, my guess is after your California visit with Gene, you must have acquired a ton of new information, and more especially, a large multitude of photographs

Hi Millet,
You are right. The weeks I spent with Gene were in many ways a dream come true. The fact that I could visit the UCR Lindcove Citrus Research Station with its many hundreds of citrus varieties and walk around and take pictures was very fulfilling. One can read an endless amount of books and look at pictures but it is really exciting to see a live tree and think "so this is what it looks like." And I am not talking about rarities. Just plain ordinary sweet oranges, blood oranges or various kinds of limes are just as exciting to meet if you have never seen the variety before.

And Gene's own collection of 200 citrus types that concentrates on the more hard to find varieties is of course out of this world. He has practically omitted sweet oranges and lemons because he does not find them interesting. Like he says: "An orange is an orange". But he had so many sour oranges, limes, clementines, satsumas and trifoliate hybrids that I had never seen before. It took me one whole week to photograph his collection and make notes. Yes, I have a lot of new material and over 3000 pictures . All I now need is time.

Polarbear · Joined: 23 Oct 2008 Posts: 14 Location: Kotka, Finland

Lemandarangequatelo wrote:

As for saving your website for offline use ... I tried using the website downloader

It is easy to save my pages on your computer for off line use. In Windows and Firefox you choose File and Save (page) as... In Chrome you have to click on the toolbox at the top right corner and choose Save page as.

Depending on the browser it gives you various kinds of choices for the file type such as Arhive file and Webpage html only but you have to choose Web page complete. Then you will have the page just as it looks on the web. It will create a folder where it saves all the pictures and other material needed. When you want to look at the page you don't click the folder but the web browser icon with the name of the page you have given when you saved it.

At the bottom of each page I give the date of the last update so you can always check if you need to download it again.

MarcV · Posted: Sat 06 Nov, 2010 1:32 pm

Lemandarangequatelo wrote:

Polarbear thank you for the great information regarding Persian limes, it was very interesting.

As for saving your website for offline use as a pdf, unfortunately I do not know of a free easy tool to do this. I tried using the website downloader called QuadSucker, but it did not work on your website for some reason. If I find a way I will let you know.

I have downloaded the whole site for off line browsing myself Embarassed

. A program called "Offline Explorer" did the trick for me. The program is not free, but has a 30 day trial period.
Here's a link:
http://www.metaproducts.com/mp/offline_explorer.htm

_________________
- Marc
https://www.facebook.com/CitrusGrowers

Lemandarangequatelo · Citruholic Joined: 01 Mar 2010 Posts: 485 Location: UK

Polarbear thank you for the download advice. I also look forward to the new information and pictures you took on your visit to the USA, that must have been so amazing.

MarcV thank you for the download software tip. I will definately download Citrus Pages too.

tidusid · Posted: Sat 06 Nov, 2010 9:46 pm

Yes sir, I understand. I was just expressing my disappointment Sad

Polarbear wrote:

tidusid wrote:

Damn, they don't ship to the US.

I am sure you know it is not Flora Toskana. I assume they would be happy to sell their plants. It is the U.S. regulations that strictly forbid all importation of citrus plants in any form, live plants, fruit or seed.

The U.S. customs now have dogs that are specially trained to detect the smell of any citrus in luggage, both carry-on and checked. An innocent orange forgotten in your backpack brings you a 300 dollar fine when a dog smells it. This is for first time offenders only. The incident is marked in your personal records and another attempt to import illegal stuff can cause immediate deportation or have more severe consequences. I kid you not. This is because of an important outbreak of a disease that once occurred due to a single fruit imported by a passenger. The fruit was infected with insects, which then spread to several states. The outbreak was finally contained and in the end successfully eradicated but the operation cost several millions of dollars.

I don't know of any governmental restrictions elsewhere that would be comparable to the U.S. regulations concerning the sale of live citrus plants both domestically and internationally. There are strictly enforced rules prohibiting the sale of uncertified citrus plants between states and even within the state of California. This is why many Internet shops say "We only ship to x, y and z" or "We don't ship outside the state of...".

I am sure it is for the best of all of us. Different countries and states have their own endemic diseases that the local rootstock have somehow adjusted to but which would cause havoc in areas where the disease is unknown. Poor citrus plants. They have been the subject of repeated man-made cross hybridisation for centuries and this has so degenerated their immune systems that our modern edible citrus plants are susceptible to dozens of infections that other plants in the same areas do not suffer from. Much as it would tempt to order plants from other states I am sure nobody wants to be found out as the source of a new infection that caused the death of all citrus plants in our own state.

Come to think of it, Australia is very strict about the import and export of citrus plants, especially the native Australian citrus but I suspect there are also commercial considerations behind the rules they have.