We have just imported a large quantity of new Citrus varieties into New Zealand (as seed). These came mostly from an overseas Citrus arboretum, and the import was inspected and approved by MPI.
For almost all of these varieties, it’s the first time they have been available in New Zealand (only Cox and Swingle were already imported previously). The reason we imported these is to increase the Citrus genetic diversity in New Zealand, which is relatively narrow at the moment. Genetic diversity will help us grow more food for ourselves, and give us a better chance to handle diseases and a changing climate. Some of these varieties may also be fantastic Citrus rootstocks for certain regions with challenging conditions, such as the West Coast or inland Canterbury/Otago and central North island.
These Citrus have various usages from eating fresh, for marmalade, for juice and for cooking. Many are ultra cold tolerant (to -15 Celsius).
Almost all of these varieties will will ‘clone’ themselves via seed (weird thing Citrus do called Nucellar embryony – article here). A few will produce very unusual seedlings and there could be the next favourite Citrus variety in those.
List of mostly-new Citrus varieties: Barkley ichandarin Zao Yang trifoliate Swingle citrumelo Cox citrandarin Ichang papeda Knights citron Indian wild orange Karna khatta hybrid Beni Amanatsu Jeruk limau Citremon
And another half dozen varieties came in very small quantities and so we will grow those on ourselves, before eventually selling grafted varieties. We will make most of these varieties available as grafted plants in the future, but for now buying these seeds is the only way you will be able to grow them.
We so far haven’t written much about walnuts, although we have been working with them for a few years. Walnuts are not huge fans of the West Coast climate, to say the least. They prefer hot and dry Summers, and deep and free-draining soils – neither of which are plentiful on the Coast. However the nutrition provided by walnuts is very hard to find in other tree crops, being both high in protein (not too difficult to find in other tree crops) and omega-3 essential fatty acids (good luck finding this in other perennials!), and so we believe that it’s worth persevering, despite the challenges.
On the plus side, our climate is relatively frost-free, and late frosts are rare and usually not severe. So we hypothesize that very early leafing varieties of walnut will give us a longer growing season, which would help counterbalance that our Summers are relatively mild. Most walnut breeding programs around the world typically breed late-leafing varieties to avoid the risk of late Spring frosts.
The other reason most walnut breeding programs aim for late-leafing is avoidance of walnut blight. Wet Spring weather during bud break is the ideal time for walnut blight to spread and take hold, so delaying leafing out by a few weeks can avoid wet Spring weather altogether in continental climates. Susceptible walnuts in a wet Spring can have almost the entire crop lost to blight, so it’s a serious problem. As there’s no guarantee that our West Coast late Spring is any drier than our early Spring (often the opposite!), I suspect that blight avoidance is not a feasible strategy for our region anyway. To this end, we are looking to work with interspecific hybrids to introduce true blight tolerance.
Other countries have access to many wonderful and productive interspecific walnut hybrids, often selected from the best of hundreds of seedlings, however in New Zealand these sorts of hybrids are essentially unheard of, and extremely rare. The few walnut grafters in New Zealand have worked with Paradox hybrids (Juglans hindsii x regia hybrids) for use as rootstock decades ago, but none do any longer. There are a few recorded Juglans ailantifolia x regia trees, but at least one has extremely poor quality nuts (double shell thickness) and I’ve not seen anything from the others.
What we do have in New Zealand though are a few successful hybrids with the iron walnut (Juglans sigillata). The iron walnut is native to the eastern Himalayas and western China, and is the closest relative to Persian walnut, having diverged an estimated 49 million years ago. Nick Nelson Parker has selected at least two apparent sigillata hybrids that are productive nut producers and have vigorous growth (‘Legacy’ and ‘Prolific’).
The seedling below is an open-pollinated seedling of ‘Legacy’, and has been leafing out for over a week now (it was in some shade as well). This is the earliest I’ve seen a walnut leaf out, and is earlier than all of my plums and roughly at the same time as almond and quince.
Open pollinated Juglans sigillata x regia F2 seedling
Of course there’s no guarantee that this seedling will amount to much, but if nobody ever tries, then we’ll never improve upon what we have.
Limited research has shown that Juglans sigillata x regia crosses can apparently have true blight resistance. Two J. sigillata x regia hybrids (in Sassafras, Australia and Guangxi, China) had anomalously low blight measurements in the study. Guangxi region has a warm and wet subtropical climate, with rainfall peaking in summer – sounds similar to the West Coast.
Walnut blight incidence for various walnuts vs rainfall accumulation post bud burst. The Sassafras hybrid and Guangxi hybrid (highlighted with a red triangle and blue circle respectively) are both believed to be J. sigillata x regia and are noticeable outliers from the general trend of wetter weather = more blight. Graph modified from [1].
We have been planting out a mother orchard of varied walnut genetics, to later make some crosses from ourselves. We’re also working on walnut grafting as well, which are one of the more difficult temperate tree crops to graft. The first ‘variety’ we’re attempting to graft is a walnut seedling found in Canterbury that appears to be mostly blight resistant. It was the best by a long shot of approximately 30 walnut trees I inspected during last Summer, with extremely few signs of blight on nuts or leaves, and no shoot dieback. As last Summer was considered extremely wet and poor by Canterbury standards, it was an ideal time to look for blight resistant walnut trees.
Lastly, we are always interested in hearing more about interspecific walnut hybrids already in New Zealand, or if you think you have seen a particularly unusual or blight tolerant walnut please let us know 🙂
Our 2nd bunch of bananas is ripe now, after ripening the last few weeks inside. The banana stem had snapped and fallen over a few weeks ago. Probably because I haven’t had enough time to maintain that patch, such as weeding. Weeds at the base area can cause it to remain damp for too long, leading to rot problems.
I wasn’t sure this bunch would ripen inside, but it has. They are creamy, sweet and taste similar to a slightly-green supermarket banana. These are from a Pisang Awak variety (originally from Auckland Botanic Gardens via one of their plant sales).
This banana patch received no protection or anything, just good soil and a good planting site with surrounding plants sheltering against wind.
Ripe Pisang Awak bunchPisang Awak banana bunch on the ground 🙁
Well we are finally sold out of Alemow and Furr C-57 seeds, a huge thank you to everyone who bought some seeds and is helping to trial them in New Zealand. We couldn’t do these kinds of things without your support, so thank you.
Seedlings from our first test batch. Furr C-57 in the top pots, Alemow in the bottom. A slug got into the right-hand Alemow pot hence the smaller size.
We have also finished compiling all the information we can find about these varieties into ‘comprehensive’ plant profiles. Please give them a read if you’re interested in Alemow or Furr C-57 to get the latest up to date information.
If I had to pick 3 key things to mention:
Genetic testing has shown that Alemow is actually a papeda x citron (same cross as Mexican / Key lime), and not a papeda x pomelo as is commonly reported, and so Alemow is actually a true giant lime
Alemow is very susceptible to Citrus Tristeza Virus [CTV], and so it’s recommended to graft it with CTV resistant scions such as lemons, trifoliata and hybrids, Meiwa, Etrog-type citrons, rough lemons, rangpurs (partial list of CTV resistant varieties in the plant profile).
Furr C-57 seems to actually taste pretty good for a trifoliata F1 hybrid, with nearly top marks from a taste report.
Last and definitely not least, we apparently didn’t get enough chaos from importing Citrus seeds, and so we decided to do it again!! This time an incredibly special opportunity was presented to us to import rare and genetically distinct Citrus, and so even more special Citrus seeds are on the way. We’re very excited to share more once everything is final. 🙂
Apples that hang on the tree well into July (at least) while still retaining great eating quality are what I’d describe as ‘superlate’ apples. Other people have called them ‘Long keeping apples‘ (but I think that is a misleading name as usually ‘keeping’ / ‘keeper’ usually refers to storage off-tree). I think these traits are important for food security, as these days relatively few houses have the space to store apples in a cool and dry place. Plus who doesn’t love physically picking apples in July.
So far I’d never come across any roadside apples that I’d describe as superlate until this one. I found this apple somewhat hidden in Weka Pass 2 days ago, still holding a decent crop of apples (more than in the photo). The tree is on a fenceline by itself, so I’m pretty sure it’s a seedling.
These apples are completely crunchy and juicy, no dryness or flouriness. In fact, some of the apples were still not fully ripe! I would describe the flavour as being slightly tart and lower-medium sweetness. On the spectrum between a Gala/Braeburn and Granny Smith, this one would be roughly 1/4 – 1/2 of the way towards Granny Smith (maybe it’s a Granny Smith seedling? As Granny Smith is also known to store on the tree very late).
These apples I think could hang on the tree another 2-3 weeks, but also the birds were getting into them so maybe by then they’d all be pecked through.
Very keen to hear about what other apple varieties folks have or know about that are still hanging on the tree 🙂
The tree still holding a crop (only about half or so of the apples are visible)
One of the most astounding facts that I’ve ever learned is that taro is not just a crop of the Asia-Pacific region, but has about two thousand years of history as a food crop in the Mediterranean.
It seems almost anachronistic to me, as if someone had told me the Ancient Egyptians liked to go surfing. In one sense, we could even say that taro is more traditionally Italian than tomatoes!
Recently I was kindly sent some extra Torreya seeds collected from trees labelled Torreya nucifera in the North island by a friend. Initially I was very doubtful of the identification, as the size of the seeds was vastly different to the other Torreya nucifera seeds I have received.
Clockwise from top left 1) North Island Torreya fruits 2) North island Torreya nuts 3) Torreya nucifera seeds from Austria 4) Torreya californica seeds from California
However the Gymnosperm Database in its description for Torreya nucifera has this enigmatic paragraph [1]:
Ohwi (1965) recognizes a number of varieties, which are not mentioned by Farjon (2010). Var. radicans is shrubby, native to the Honshu mountains. Var. macrosperma has a large seed 35-40 mm long, and is found only in the Mie and Shiga prefectures on Honshu. Var. igaensis has shorter (10-18 mm long), abruptly spinescent leaves, with a short (20 mm) seed. It is rare, found only in Iga Prefecture on Honshu.
The $2 coin has a diameter of 26.5mm, so perhaps the seeds are from Torreya nucifera var igaensis. The seeds from Austria look to be about 35mm long which matches Torreya nucifera var macrosperma.
Close up photo showing seeds as well as the single leaf blade that came with the seeds. The length of the leaf blade matches the description for igaensis.
Since we’re selecting for larger seeds, there may not appear to be any benefit to selecting this variety with smaller seeds. However it’s always worth growing out extra genetics if you have the space, as it’s possible that the smaller seed size is offset with vigour, precociousness or productiveness.
Hopefully we’ll be able to plant out a trial row of Torreya within the next 1-2 years and begin the next phase of our Torreya project.
Well it turns out our second bunch of bananas is on the way. This time it’s from the Pisang Awak patch, with plants originally sourced from Auckland Botanic Gardens. The names attached to various banana varieties within New Zealand is layers upon layers of mixups. Just when you think you have a good grasp, another layer peels off and you see something different. So whether this plant is actually Pisang Awak or not, I am no longer sure, but at least I am sure of where I got it and that I didn’t change the name 🙂
This banana patch has been completely neglected the past year, receiving only 1x feed and nothing else, not even chop and drop. Unlike last time, this time I will try to protect the bunch with a banana bag or similar to see what kind of effect it has and whether it keeps more of the fruit in good condition compared to last time. Of course, it may still fail to ripen next Spring.
Huacatay
This banana patch is growing with huacatay (Tagetes minuta) for company (a few stems are visible behind the flower bell), a perennial herb of the marigold genus, native to the Southern half of South America. Huacatay is a fantastic herb and due to vigorous growth can be used for chop and drop. It also has strong effects on the soil microbiome. I would describe huacatay as ‘passionfruit mint’. Others describe the taste as a mixture of sweet basil, tarragon, mint and citrus.
Huacatay exudes powerful anti-fungal and anti-nematode compounds from its roots. I’m pretty sure the amount of these compounds released by huacatay are orders of magnitude more than those released by annual marigolds which many gardeners will plant as a companion crop for tomatoes, due to its deeper root system and much more vigorous growth habit (I haven’t researched this yet though so could be wrong). We’re trialing huacatay as a companion plant for mountain papaya (Vasoncellea sp.) due to their relatively poor tolerance of damp soils – with the idea that the huacatay will ward off fungal & oomycete problems while also drying the soil through active growth in Winter. It’s likely that huacatay could be allelopathic to some plants (or at least the effect on beneficial mychorrhiza may be negative), so we haven’t used it everywhere.
Well, we have finally succeeded in importing 2x new Citrus varieties to New Zealand! This has been a very long and very expensive process, and we have taken on all of the costs and risks ourselves. We would highly appreciate it if folks can buy some of these Citrus seeds to support our efforts, as there was a 5000 minimum order per each of these varieties
You can order directly from our website here:…. Edit: These seeds are now completely sold out, and we will likely not import them again. In 5-10 years when our own trees are fruiting we will again have seeds for sale and grafted plants however 🙂
Alemow (Citrus macrophylla) is a rare species of Citrus (according to the Tanaka system) from Cebu in the Philippines, where it is believed to originate. It is believed to be a hybrid of Celebes papeda (Citrus celebica) and pomelo [it is known to be a hybrid of a papeda and a citron]. If used as rootstock, it has superb compatibility with lemons and limes (some varieties of lemon are incompatible with trifoliata), and many other Citrus too such as kumquats, and is emerging as a very high performing Citrus that copes with high salt levels and seasonal flooding. The fruit are sort of like giant limes and can be juiced or used to make marmalade.
Furr C-57 citrandarin (Citrus reticulata x trifoliata) is a hybrid between a Sunki mandarin and trifoliata. It is much more vigorous than trifoliata, and has a longer growing season (as it is evergreen). It is tolerant to Citrus tristeza virus, very tolerant to Phytophthora and very tolerant of citrus nematode – which are the most important diseases of Citrus in NZ. It is super cold tolerant if you want to grow it on for fruit, as it can handle about -15C once mature and so suitable for places such as inland Otago. The fruit can be juiced or used to make a marmalade.
We also have imported a lot of other rare seeds from the USA/Canada as well late last year that are also available too. Most special of which are hybrid persimmons (hybrids between American and Asian persimmons, we can highly recommend these) and Canadian pawpaw (Asimina triloba native to Canada).
We were very kindly sent some Torreya californica seeds by Don Thomas of the California Native Plant Society a few months ago, and today I took the seeds out of their cold stratification in the fridge to plant out. They should’ve come out a few weeks ago, but I have been having trouble concentrating lately due to very troubling world affairs…
Don sourced the seeds from the Santa Cruz mountains, and they are… ginormous as the post title states. In the photo below we have compared them to average sized New Zealand sourced Torreya californica seeds (the largest NZ sized seeds probably come close to the smallest Santa Cruz mountains sourced seed). I have no idea how much of the size difference is caused by genetic versus environmental differences, and unfortunately it will take decades to be able to tell. For now we hope to get as many of these sprouted as possible, and then get these trees planted more commonly around New Zealand.
Thanks once again to Don for his help and kindness!
Torreya californica seeds compared by size. Average-sized New Zealand sourced seeds on the left, ginormous Santa Cruz mountains source on the right.
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