#tangor

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)

Name: Tangor

Dairugger Name: Saruta Katz

Team: Sea Team

Ship: Space Prober. Forms Voltron’s upper left leg.

Special Relationships: Is the same species as Wolo.

Personality: All we really know about Tangor is his huge appetite. His speaking lines are pretty few and far between and he doesn’t appear much outside of group shots. The only other information we have is the his brief character bio provided in the Vehicle Voltron DVD, which describes him as “tough talking” and the last guy a Drule “would want to run into in a dark Space Station.”

Episodes to Shine: None.

Name: Zandee

Dairugger Name: Barros Karateya

Team: Sea Team

Ship: Multi-Wheeled Explorer. Forms Voltron’s lower left leg.

Special Relationships: None

Personality: Unknown, sadly. This guy is the least shown of the Vehicle Voltron team and only very rarely gets a speaking line.  The character bio provided by the DVDs claims he’s a friendly crack pilot who’s loyal to the team. We’ll just have to take their word for it.