#citrange

One was a citrange, which has three parents: one temperate, one subtropical and the third tropical. It’s not a great eating fruit but it’s a great, hardy rootstock for grafting other varieties onto.

This is how the citrange came to be growing on what had been a grafted ‘Lisbon’ lemon tree; the fruit started to emerge on the owner’s tree after he damaged the ‘Lisbon’ top of the tree, stimulating the rootstock to grow and fruit.

Jerry grew a few from seed to see what they tasted like.

Rangpur is a hybrid between a mandarin and citron - very vigorous and a heavy cropper but also very spiny, which is common to a lot of seed-sown citrus. This is a defence against being grazed but you can prune these off and they won’t resprout. The tree does seem susceptible to rust mite and last summer got a bad case of scale, leading to sooty mould.

The juice is very acidic but it makes a cracking marmalade.

Tangor is a green orange – a hybrid between a mandarin and sweet orange. It has the sweet juiciness of an orange but the flatter fruit of a mandarin. It’s not as vigorous as the Rangpur but is just as thorny but should make a useful small shrub, making great juice and lovely eaten fresh.

If sowing citrus seed, never let the soil dry out while they germinate, which should take about 6 weeks.

All citrus love compost-rich, freely draining, acidic soil.

All these citrus fruit annually in autumn.

Featured plants:

Citrange (Citrus x insitorum)

Rangpur (Citrus reticulata x medica)