Nope, I never cull them. I seldom see any obvious hybrids, maybe 1 in 1,000.

There was a paper presented at the International Citrus Congress in South Africa, 1996, showing that a cull rate of about 50% is appropriate, if you really want uniformity in FD seedlings. And I got the feeling they were not just culling out hybrids, but also non-true-to-type nucellar seedlings. If I can remember to look up that paper I will. But it's in the Proceedings of that meeting. I was there, taking notes (so this is from memory), but I do have the proceedings at the office.

Non-true-to type nucellar seedlings--can you elaborate? Are they actual mutations or just weak/vigorous seedlings?

I presume they are true mutations. I need to find and reread that paper.
Malcolm

Here's an interesting paper from Japan concerning the inheritance of the crooked thorn trait in Flying Dragon that I read some time ago but couldn't remember where I had seen it. I just found it again.

http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjshs/74/3/189/_pdf

I'm not trying to be argumentative especially with a university professor of citrus growing vs myself an amateur grower, just IMHO stating my experience.

Here are two pots of hundreds of one year old flying dragon seedlings. I don't see any hybrids or off type in these two pots, do you? Perhaps the hybrids died off or I don't know what to look for?

When the seedlings are grown out, they look like the typical flying dragon seedling with only 1-2 inches of straight trunk. Sometimes it is difficult to find a section of trunk straight enough to T-bud.



Here is one of my 1 in a 1,000 off type very close to Bonnie Childer's edible flying dragon hybrid(which I used to have a plant of), with exaggerated thorns sometimes 2 inches long and bigger leaves. This is definitely similar to the type B in the paper



I also even more rarely get an extremely stunted seedling of which I don't have a picture of that has very dense packed leaves and doesn't grow beyond a few inches in height. I've seed the same variation grown out by others. This is not the same as the type C. The ones I've seen were a 3 or 4 inch trunk so covered in leaves that you couldn't see the trunk.

Type C looks like there is lots of branching. When I grow out the seedlings, I clip the branches to get a thicker trunk.

I'm no expert but your seedlings aren't quite what I expected true to type flying dragon seedlings to look like. The seedlings are packed densely enough in the pots it's difficult for me to tell for sure from your picture. Most look like they have a straight trunk with short straight thorns like the type A seedlings from this paper.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/HS/HS22100.pdf

I see a few with downward curving thorns that look like type B

Maybe there's some type C in there that are forced to grow more upward because of the planting density but I can't tell. Maybe they will all have curved thorns and trunks when they get bigger but I don't know the answer to that.

The unique one looks like type B but with longer thorns and maybe different leaves.

According to this paper only the type C seedlings are the true to type dwarfing seedlings.

The extremely stunted seedlings you mentioned are probably either type C or, more likely, the rosette type shown in figure 3 of the paper from Japan I linked to in a previous message.

This is all new to me so I'm just trying to understand what is what, I'm not trying to argue.

Thats not a seedling(grown from a seed) is it?? Looks to be cleft grafted? Or am I just seeing things??

The longer excessive curly thorns of a FD do not show until the seedling grows larger in size. - Millet (1,063-)