Hi,

Last year I budded 10-12 variegated pink lemon trees.Rootstocks were sour orange.
This year they all grown but I noticed that few of them are similar to mother tree, they are normal, they have big leaves as seen in the photo below;



But other 8-9 have a different leaf shape.There are lots of, lots of very small leaves, close to each other, please check the photos;





I don't understand why,do you have an idea?

I also budded variegated calamondins at the same time but they all died, none survived.Maybe I made a mistake while writing their names and these trees may be calamondins but this is a very very small chance, I remember very well that I named all trees correctly.

Bottom two trees do look like Calomondins. Most lemons have a serrated edge to the leaves, and new growth is red / purple... Crush a leaf. Lemon has a very strong citrus scent, where calomondin has a much weaker scent to it.

Thanks Laaz,

The trees are at the farm, I will check as soon as I am there.
But, I labeled each three myself and I am pretty sure I named them correct.

Plus, the mother calamondin tree had very thin branches, tough these trees have thicker branches like the pink lemon.

If they are not calamondins, what can cause a change like this on leaves?

I found this photo;



This calamondin is very similar to my trees, maybe I made a mistake naming the trees, very confusing situation

Simply you can find out by rubbing the leaf and take a good nose of the scent of the essential oils.

Lemon smells fresh, like a typical detegent for kitchenware. Very typical and well known. Maybe you know the small packet wet hand towells, one can get in a restaurant after having some finger food or one can buy in the shops for a quick hand cleaning if one travels. These towells usually also smell lemony.
That scent is very special and dinstinctive.

Calamondin, a hybrid of usualy unknown parentage betwen a Citrus, maybe a small fruited mandarine type, like Shekwasha, Sunki, Rangpur or so, and Fortunella, a Kumquat, lacks that typical scent. You can rub the leaf, curl and wrap it betwen the fingers, without getting a typical or so remarkable scent like lemon. It, like most Kumquats, smells more like fresh cut gras or weeds and lacks the typical scent of the Citrus characteristical essential oils....

So, go and let your nose find out...

Last year I bought a clementine. All the leaves where very small, narrow and strait upward. One year later they are falling, and large, broad and horizontal leaves are growing. Don't know why.
It must depend on physical conditions.

Is it just me? But I love the fragrance of the Calamondin leaves when I cut some of them off. The leaves have better fragrance compared to lemons.

The leaves of the variegated calamondins are not as fragrant (or really lacking thereof) as the leaves of the regular calamondins, at least from my trees.

Thanks Steve, I will do my best but I am not sure if my nose is good enough to differentiate I guess I need something more scientific

I think what happened to Sylvain's clementine is happening to my trees.

I wish these are calamondins because I lost the mother tree tough I have a lot of pink lemons.

It seems like I need to see a fruit, right?

Thanks JoeReal,

JoeReal wrote:

It could also be affected.

What could it be affected by?

many possible things that affected those leaves... might affect the fruits to certain extent.
I could only speculate that it might be temporarily affected by insect pests. I've had deformed kumquat fruits when my leaves were deformed by mealy aphids for example. Could also be water, temperature or nutrient stress that the plants hasn't fully recovered yet. Or maybe pathogenic but the plant would still recover later on. My citruses usually recovers from various stresses and able to become normal growing later on. So don't worry, just wait and see, as what have been suggested by others.

Thanks for the explanation JoeReal.

We have new evidence

Contrary to what I have thought the difference between their scent was very evident.I crushed their leaves and the pink lemon leaf scent was very beautiful and sharp.Tough, the small leaves were smelling like some oil, no lemon scent sign.

I also noticed that the lemon has new sprout in purple color but the sprout of the small leaf tree was bright yellow, please check the photo below;



Luckily I also found very small fruits and they were more like round than elliptical;



Now I believe that I made a mistake last year while naming the budded trees and these are calamondin trees, what do you think?

That is correct, Lemons flush out red leaves, Calomondins flush green.