Leaves look like kumquat blooms looks like orange or lemon.

Sometimes if you smell a leaf it will give you a clue. Lemon leaves smell lemony.

I have two mystery oranges (I think) we rescued on this neglected property we bought. They are both finally blooming, but are grafted trees, not seedlings like yours. It's fun to watch the mystery unfold. I hope they are something not Valencia because we brought a Valencia with us and it is blooming also. I see no difference in the blooms. Bring on the OJ!

I'll be asking for ID once the fruit ripens.

Suzi

If an unknown tree has a graft and the tree is growing from branches above the graft, you can be fairly sure it is a commercially produced tree. That should mean it is a fairly normal variety.

If you want to chase that down, you can use the info here: http://idtools.org/id/citrus/citrusid/

If it is growing from a seed then there are lots more possibilities. Some varieties grow true to type, which means the seed will grow the same fruit as the parent. Some will be crosses. Some grow some of each.

If the flower petals are really purple like they look in the picture, it is probably a lemon. The most common lemons grow true to type, I think. However, they take a long time to bear fruit when grown that way. The new fruit in the flower is probably the first one for that plant.

It is a neat experiment to let them grow. In any case, you are much more likely to be happy with the fruit of a lemon grown from seed than most other citrus grown from seed.

I know this is late. My apologies. The plant grew out of nowhere. I tried to take the best picture but it was a challenge with the winds present. As you can see it's very shrubby. No graft. Sorry I don't know how to rotate the image.

Well, hard to say what it is. Let the fruit mature and see what develops. It could be a chance seedling, or, it could be a grafted tree that was close to death that has come back. Doesn't look like rootstock, but it could be. You'll know for sure by the fruit it bears. Does not look like a kumquat tree - leaves are too long and lanceolate shaped. Looks more like an orange tree to me, or possibly sour orange (rootstock). Guessing you took this photo with an iPhone, as the iPhone "remembers" it's orientation, and you took the photo with the phone in the "tall" or portrait position. You need to take your photos in the sideways or landscape position, with your volume buttons facing downward. Or, take these mis-oriented photos into a photo editing software, and change their orientation and save. Oh, and this is the normal time for citrus to bloom here in S. California. You'll see blooms starting as early as January, through March/April for most citrus cultivars. Lemons and sometimes limes (mainly Bearss) will have more than one bloom cycle, almost all year off and on for Improved Meyer lemons, in fact.

Patty S.

This post was edited by hoosierquilt on Mon, Mar 17, 14 at 16:42