David E. Ross wrote:
On 12/7/2009 11:21 AM, geronimo wrote:
So if some of the seeds come up, they will just be standard lemon
trees, and the fruit might be just fine?

I bought my dwarf lemon only 1 1/2 yrs ago, and I just picked about
ten good fruit off of it. THe aroma coming from it when in bloom is
really great, too!

Citrus is apomictic. This is a characteristic -- rare among flowering
plants -- that results in seeds that are viable (will sprout and produce
new plants) even if the flowers were never pollinated, not even
self-pollinated. However, pollination is indeed possible and is more
likely to produce viable seeds.

A plant from an apomictic seed will be true to its parent. A plant from
a pollinated seed -- even from a self-pollinated flower -- might be a
new hybrid or a reversion to an ancestral form. Hybrids and ancestral
forms be better or worse than the parent plant.

There is no way to tell -- without expensive genetic testing -- to
determine whether a citrus seed is apomictic or pollinated.



You can plant lots of seeds and only keep the ones that sprout 2
shoots. Half resulting the seedlings will be genetic clones of the
mother plant. (I wonder if you can tell when of the 2 shoots is the
clone while they are still attached to the seed)

Bob