As my citrus plants are still young with the exception of the navel orange I purchased, where can I expect to see the flower buds form. will they be in the new flushes of growth or will they just form between the leaves and the stems?
thanks in advance
-smiley

Depends on what variety you are talking about, but most citrus will flower on the new growth.

will the flower show up with the new growth or slightly afterwords?
-smiley

Many times it will show up with the new growth, you will see new growth & flower buds mixed in together.

Some cultivars, it seemed to be alternating between vegetative growth flush and reproductive growth flush. Most cultiv ars have reproductive growth flushes that happen during spring time along with vegetative growth flushes. Some branches, especially from the vigorous sprouts will only have vegetative growth flushes in spring. So both vegetative and reproductive growth flushes can occur at the same time. After the reproductive growth flush in spring, then there will be vegetative growth flushes only, and sometimes, an out of season reproductive growth flushes if the plants have been mildly stressed enough to trigger the flowering.

For kumquats and other fortunella hybrids, it would be growth first that is flushing, then later on, as the leaves darken, flower buds start to form on each of the internodes, much later sometimes going into early summer.

While most oranges, grapefruits and pummelos tend to have flower clusters near the terminal portions of the stems, the limes have flowers on almost every internode.

thank you Joe and Laaz, this has been very informative. one plant i didn't see listed by skeet was lemons, is there somethign different about them or was it just missed when listing?
-smiley

Kumquats are the last to flower. As Joe said, mine flower in late May - June.

Lemons flower all year long & mostly on new growth. You will however get some flowers on the old growth with lemons as well

One thing you will see with many citrus is that when you have a heavy flush of flowers you will get very little vegetative growth. Later in the season after the fruit has set you will see more vegetative growth.

The Key limes I sent you will both flower & flush throughout the year.

Lemons are a little different from most citrus in that they commonly bloom several times each year (although there are a few others). I was a little discouraged when my Lisbon Lemon did not fruit the first 2 years it bloomed (only a few dozen blooms), but the third time was a charm-- I got over 100 lemons last yr and at least as many this yr--in addition this yr it has bloomed 3 times and set new fruit each time--although the majority of the fruit set was in spring.

I did eventually find an article that said it is typical of Lisbon to take about 3 years to settle down and fruit--that seems to be the case here.

I was about to type some info on lemons but got called away. Laaz and Scott provided excellent info.

When lemon is still young, they most likely will flower only once or twice a year, but as they grow older or bigger, they would flower year round, with peak blooms in spring and later a mild peak in fall, but depends also on some cultivars. The Fall flowers develop into summer fruits, so sometimes, citrus growers would intentionally reduce the spring blooms by spraying GA3, so that the fall blooms are enhanced to force peak fruit production around summer when the prices of lemons are the highest. But for us homegrowers, constant year round lemon production is the one we like most. But even then, from November until March, practically it would be raining lemons on my lemon tree. I do have lemon blooms and lemon fruits year round.

this is great information that i had never thought about asking nor seen anyone ask at a previous time. I am so glad to have this outlet of information.