Citrus mitis(Calamondin)

Description

Calamondins are happy-looking trees, adorned with sweet-smelling white flowers in theSpring and baby tangerines fall and winter. Use them anywhere you use lemons or limes (calamondinade, salad dressings, chicken, halved green calamondins are often set on on dishes on the table so that diners can squeeze them on their food. My friend and restaurant owner, May Hong, used the leaves in a Thai dish. My friend Luis Lopez-Perez used the leaves to make tea.

They are a larval host for one of the USA’s biggest butterflies. Honeybees love the flowers. Being evergreen, they make good winter shelter and summer nesting trees. Connie Ream gave me a potted Calamondin Tree in the mid ’90s. Thinking it was frost-tender, For years, I set it outside in the summer, where the chickens stole the fruit, then brought it in for the winter.

One day, I went to visit Ned and Faye Rahn’s nursery in Port Royal, SC and asked him how much cold they could take. Ned pointed to a massive Calamondin Tree in his neighbor’s yard. When I got home, I planted mine in the ground. I think it grew 6′ that year. Later on, I bought another one from Ned and Faye. Every once in a while a few leaves or fruit froze. One winter, we went without a freeze until February 15. Then, it dropped to the lower 20’s. I wanted to harvest all of the fruit, before it froze. I hastily picked all I could, then cut the branches from the top and stashed them where they wouldn’t freeze so I could strip them later.. This was a big mistake. Some of the freshly exposed branches froze. If I had left them alone, I believe that I would have lost the fruit, but not any branches. The following year, I didn’t get many fruit.. but it recovered after that. Last winter 2017-2018, when we had snow on the ground for over a week, the tree didn’t lose a leaf. The attached articles says they are hardy to 20 F

The trees that we are selling are seedlings of my two calamondin trees. Ned Rahn said that they grow true from seed and should set fruit within 3 years of germination These were at least a year old when I potted them up in 2017.

Calamondin Tree Care: How To Grow Calamondin Citrus Trees