In November 2011, I germinated some PT seeds that Laaz had kindly sent me. I will admit I was very dubious about the claim of early flowering. The seedlings looked just like all my other PT seedlings and I put them outside and more-or-less forgot about them.
When I next looked at them in the spring of 2012, most had died back to almost ground level. Perhaps it was the hard winter frosts on young growth, or perhaps they had dried out at some stage. Two of the seedlings had survived without damage and I provided them all with some frost protection for the next two winters.
The two undamaged seedlings are now about 12"/ 30cms tall. To my complete surprise they are now starting to flower - I should have believed the claims of early flowering! However, I'm not sure they are going to form fruits this season as there appears to be no ovule on the first open flower.
Here are some photos:
1. complete plant
2. top of plant - (notice the beautiful blue sky in England!)
3. flower detail




Mike/Citrange

Very cool! A bit over 2 years to flower even in a non-ideal citrus growing area. I hope they turn out to be cold hardy though. I might try popping a couple of my seedlings in the ground this spring to see what happens.

Edit: That really is a nice blue sky...

Very cool, Mike! I have two small plants from Sylvain. One is about to bloom but the flower bud looks as if the flower will be somewhat defective. I will see.
Should you not need the pollen yourself could you send me the flowers when they have fallen off? I want to do some crossing this year with the better tasting Poncirus from Mainz, with Limquat and Sanford Curafora.

Great! Will you do crossing?

By the way does anybody know whether there are different precocious Poncirus types?
I have one from sylvain (thank you!) and found one on the list of Eisenhut Nursery claimed to be originate by Bernhard Voss, then I read a scientific paper about precocious flowering in Poncirus. i guess this couldn`t be all the same....?

I just read the paper again, this is what is written about it

"In 1976, a spontaneous mutant with a short juvenile phase (precocious trifoliate orange) derived from Poncirus trifoliata (L.) Raf, was found in Yichang, Hubei province, China. Twenty percent of the seedlings germinated from the mutant seeds flowered in the first year after germina- tion and then flowered twice or three times per year,..."

So there are at least 2 types...

Many thanks citrange for sharing this info, much appreciated by me! Mine are about 1,5 years old, 20 - 30cm tall. At the moment are still 'sleeping', no sign of new flush.
I'll boost them with N this year and hoping to have few flowers next year or may be this year? Who knows?

It is growing much faster when grafted on regular poncirus.

Thank you Ilya, because it is a VERY slow grower!

Till,
I have been sent some seedlings of a Poncirus clone called (by the sender, who was German) "wenig bitter" (less bitter). Did you ever taste one of these fruits? Could you recognize any difference?
My "wenig bitter" flowers for the first time but as far as I could see there are only flowers without female part (what is it called?)

I just noticed yesterday that a poncirus tree I planted from seed 5 years ago was flowering.

Interesting thing is that none of the other trees I started from the same batch of seed are doing so.

Not only that, but the one that is flowering towers over the others at 2.5 meters to their 1 meter at the most.

In any case, I am very happy as I only got into this citrus thing about 5 years ago and this is the first success I've had at growing my own tree from seed to flowering.

Roberto,

gratulations for the first flowers!
I have tasted quite a lot of fruits of a less bitter tree standing in Mainz botanical garden. The rind of the fruits was as awfully tasting as that of any Poncirus but the fruits had much less pine smell and were not bitter. I made lemonade of them (see the post under recipes) which had only a very faint bitter taste, almost nothing and not unpleasant. By the way, I can send seedlings this year.
But I am not sure, if you have the same variety. I have tasted the Poncirus fruits of several trees in Cologne, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Bochum and Mainz and have found that the taste of the fruits vary to not a small degree. As far as I could see the mentioned tree in Mainz is the best. But there was at least one other tree that was not bitter. It seems in fact that the bitterness, so many forum members are talking about, is not too pronounced in many Poncirus fruits. I also remember a Japanese Genbank with many Poncirus varieties, the most of which are decribed as not bitter or only a bit bitter.
From whom do you actually have the "not bitter" Poncirus? From Ulrich Baeurer? If so he will be glad to hear that yours is blooming for he lost his "less better" tree.

Cheers,

Till

compared to the flowers on the pictures here, my one tree that is flowering has tiny blossoms with very skinny petals.


There sure is a lot of variation in poncirus flowers.

Till,

You are right, it was Uli who sent me the seeds. It is sometimes said that fruits of Poncirus "Flying Dragon" taste better than normal PTs fruits. In fact the juice is often just sour and does not taste bad at all. There are hybrids that taste much worse. ChangshaXPT for example. Or Segentrange Sanford Venasca of which the fruits look great but taste awful.
Give my best regards to Uli.
Robert