10/18/2007


Hi Everyone...


Just received from my niece for my birthday a
Citrus Sunquat from Logees Greenhouse, gorgeous.
Does anyone know about this new citrus ?



Cheers..Joe...

The Sunquat is a hybrid cross between a Meiwa Kumquat and a Clementine Mandarin, or possible a Meyer lemon. It is not know for sure. The Sunquat seedlings were first discovered growing underneath a Clementine tree. The fruit when mature is yellow and about the size of a golf ball. It has a lemon type of taste. From time to time I eat them from the tree as I walk past. Being a sour fruit, one does not eat a lot at a time. It might make a good aid, but I have never tried it. - Millet (Laus Deo)

I thought it was from a Sun(kist) orange and a (meiwa) kumquat and thus called a Sunquat. It was just a speculation. The way to make certain if somebody ran a genetic profile to find out the most likely parentage.

Thanks for the info that it is from Clementine (which type though, there's quite a plenty) and a Meiwa kumquat. I will take note of this.

There is an article in the Fruit Gardener, California Rare Fruit Growers, Vol 25, No. 6, about the "Sunquat". I think you can still get copies of the article at CRFE website: http://www.crfg.org/fg/index.html

Millet is right in that it is believed that it is a cross between Clementine and Meiwa. Eating one would kind of confirm that that was it's parents too. Though sour, it tastes better to me than an actual lemonquat.

Ned

I would further add that the peel of a Sunquat is edible. In my estimation not as tasty as the peel of the Meiwa, not as bad as a Clementine peel, but in the middle. - Millet

Is the sunquat from Logee the same as this one?

http://www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/sunquat.html


The one at UCR Citrus Variety collection is Sunquat Lemonquat. Is this a hybrid between a Sunquat and a Lemonquat? Kind of like Meyer Lemon and Kumquat hybrid, simply because Meyer Lemon is suspected to be Orange Lemon hybrid.

I don't know about Logee's Sunquats, I have never purchased anything from them. All of the plants that I have personally seen that came from Logee are really very small.

Joe,

At first glance, I would say it is the same as the Sunquat, but I suspect the issue of the actual parents of the "Sunquat" (I believe this is a patented name, and is the same plant as Mandarinquat.) is an educated guesstimate at best. It will, as I think you mentioned, only be settled by DNA testing.

Florida has in its collection actual known hybrids of lemons and kumquats, and I would imagine California does too. I have never tasted one, but I have read somewhere that they aren't that good.

Ned

Ned, I have Indio Mandarinquat which is really good. The skin is the same as that of Nagami kumquat when it comes to taste but tremendously bigger, but not as good as that of the softer Meiwa kumquat. The indio mandarinquat is like a big nagami kumquat but with elongated neck.

I like the Fukushu kumquat the best, the skin is sweeter but the softest one so far.

I recently got a lemonquat from Toots Bier, but now, I am not sure if it is the Sunquat lemonquat or still another form which is just lemonquat. I'll know when it fruits sometime within a year.

I know two of the finders of the sunquat in Houston, TX Louis Waldon and Stewart Nagle(deceased). I have a sunquat tree in a pot I had a large one in the ground but I don't want but a few a year to eat as it is a novelty. If you wait until March, they are pretty sweet, much sweeter than the indio mandarinquat which is very sour but pretty. I topworked my inground sunquat to changshou kumquat and meiwa. BTW the sunquat fruited from seed in 2 years! My sunquat was supposedly a marmalaidquat and the seeds came from Stewart Nagel, but I can't tell any difference with my grafted sunquat.