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Hello,

I bought a mandarin orange plant and a grapefruit plant in the summer.
Unfortunately when I went away, they were either over watered or under
watered, because when I came back, they dropped their leaves. After a
little dormant period, they have started to shoot again. I looked
closer today and see that they are shooting from the bottom of the
"trunk".

Now I should explain that I am new to all this (if that wasn't obvious
already). Three quarters of the way up the trunk there is a faint
diagonal line, so I am wondering if this is the graft? I have read
some books and they say when repotting citrus, to make sure the graft
is above soil level. Reading that made me think the graft was quite
low, so I'm not sure; these are a foot high. Does the graft rise as
the plant grows?

I know apples for example are grafted. I hadn't realised citrus was.
The thing is, these new shoots are below, what I think may be the
graft. Without waiting months for them to flower and fruit, do you
think that what I am growing is not what I am expecting? What are
citrus grafted onto (and why?).

Is this the best place to ask citrus questions? I saw a couple of UK
gardening groups in Usenet but this seemed the biggest. I thought I
would ask here before posting to the international rec.gardening
group. I visited yahoo groups but that found 120 groups matching
"citrus" though most seemed to have nothing to do with fruit! The ones
that did had only 5-7 members!

Thanks for your help.

I have been in contact with my brother in South Africa, one of whose
friends, Ferdi Esselen, owns what is said to be the largest citrus nursery
in the world, at Mamalene, Mpumalanga.

According to him, the general practice nowadays is not to graft, but to bud
all citrus trees. The stock is cut off flat at about 15 cm above ground
level, and is budded at that level. The bud-level does rise very slowly
over time by a matter of centimetres only.

I wonder if the OP's trees were deliberately budded or (unlikely?) grafted
high up specifically to make specimen standards.

Franz