Why is it that now certain words in our posts are now in diffrent fonts, colors and underlined? When I put the arrow underneath it, I saw that it was trying to take me to Dunkin Doughnuts! Must be some advertising scheme. Anyways I did some research today and what I did was take out the champaigne part of the cultivar name and I found a cultivar called Cocktail. I found that this tree was not a commercial tree and that it was a cross of mandarin, grapefruit and pummelo. The resulting fruit was sweeter then grapfruit with subacid flavors but the fruit was very seedy. Roberta's didn't mention this, and I did see the actual tree with the fruit. They cross sectioned the fruit and squeezed it into a glass. I would think that all those seeds would have come out but I didn't see this. The one characteristic that is not appealing to me is the seedy fruit. Especially when what I have ordered is the honeybell and I know that they don't have a lot of seeds. I checked my post from the citrus forum but no responses yet. I hope someone can help me soon. I know I have till April to make up my mind. I can change it or keep my order as is up till then, that is when they will ship it to me.
Andrew

they are key word advertisements.

they will also save these keywords in your cookies and post banner ads catering to them.

i use firefox web browser and AdBlock add-on so i dont see them. makes pages load faster too

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

also your spelling champagne incorrectly, that may be affecting your search.

never heard of it and im pretty hip on citrus. anything thats a hybrid of a mandarin and grapefruit is worth growing imo, i love tangelos, i want to try a page orange or find a small tree (im not willing to spend alot on citrus because it will probably one day die)

Sorry, Andrew.....never heard of it. I don't see it in any of my books with info about citrus, nor in any of the online collection listings or germplasm repositories. I would guess it is just a newly created marketing name.....but I do not know for sure. I'm with you on the seedy fruit dislike. Any fruit and especially citrus would be off my list if it was seedy.

Harry

Mangokush,
That is exactly the reason why I am having suchc a dilema. They described the fruit as having the honey bell flavors but I also think they said it had a slight hint of vanilla. I would love to someday grow a page orange. I have heard nothing but great stuff about this fruit and trying to find it around here is impossible. Have you heard of the Cocktail grapefruit? Grr. I really don't know what to do now. Part of me is wanting it because it is a new cross. I have had nothing bad to say about the company that is selling these trees. I think paying around $25.00 for a 2 1/2ft tree is very good for a mail order tree. Well I know it is not exactly mail order but not sure what else to call it. The dwarf mexican keylime I bought from them is huge now. The tree is closer to 3ft tall and has filled in very well. I pinched the new wgrowth frquently and got at least a dozen new branches that formed along the main leader of the tree. I now have a tree with an awesome framework for future growth. I also like the fact that all there citrus are dwarfs. I also have the dwarf Moro blood orange. The only bad thing that I can say about this tree is that it requires more light and grows significantly slower then the keylime. I have heard that sweet oranges grow slower but I did a ton of research before ordering both trees. I spoke to my friend is owner of a very large tropical greenhouse/nursery in Erie PA. I asked him what he thought and he told me that keylimes are VERY sensitive to cold temperatures and really only flourish with warm temps(75-85 max. temps and no cooler then 60-65 for minimum.) and because of that he would only sell the limequat which is hardier because of the kumquat parentage. He did say that he could do a special order for me and obtain the keylime for me but I would have to wait for him to order more tropicals from that supplier first. I called a few months later when I hadn't heard anything yet and for some reason they lost my request. I did some more research and found that some nureries were selling dwarf keylimes for northern gardeners but also found that dthey did require more care. I finally decided to order from Logees and was very dissapointed to have paid almost $15.00 dollars for a poorly rooted cutting that was barely 8 inches tall and died within 3 months. I decided no more keylime and went with a large ponderosa lemon which actually fruited itself to death. That was quite a tangent but what I was trying to tell you was when I finally decided to give it one more try, I bought one from Roberta's on QVC. I was channel surfing one afternoon and saw they were selling citrus. They showed the tree you would be getting and I thought the price was excellent. I went to the QVC website and checked out Roberta's and found the Dwarf Moro blood orange. I ended up buying that one also and got both trees last spring. Like I said earlier keylime was excellent right out of the box. The blood orange was considerably smaller and they sent me a replacement that was much larger but still a single stem. That tree is VERY slow coming along. I didn't even get half of the growth on it that I got from the keylime and it took a very long time to get that. I think I may have 4 new branches and I did lose a couple from letting it go dry for too long. You grow sweet oranges right? I had a Star Ruby grapefruit several years ago and unfortunetly I didn't give it the bright light it needed and it finally croaked on me. I do know that tree grew much faster and it definetly grew faster then this orange did. What do you think. Would I be better waiting to get a page orange a few years from now? I would like to add a grapefruit now instead of a honeybell especially when this champagne cocktail has almost the same parentage as the honeybell with the the exception of the pommelo.
Harry,
I think at this point my best bet is to contact the company. What I said to Mangokush above is true. Roberta's has always been great with me. The only turn off i had with them was the size of my blood orange but they rectified that immedietly. Now that I think of it, both blood oranges had grafting tape around the grafting area when I got them. That was not a good thing to me but the graft was healed well. They just didn't peel of the tape and I had to do it. What is your experience with sweet oranges? Is my growing experience the same as yours? I know that you can give yours better temps then I can. I just don't want to buy the honeybell and have it take 2-3 years to get enough height to be able to grow and ripen the fruit. I am going to try to go to Erie this Sunday and talk to my friend who owns the greenhouse. I know he has more experience at growing citrus then I do. I am almost thinking that I could get a Page orange later (when I have more growing space) and be more satisfied with that fruit then the honeybell but I would have to order them from a grower in Florida. You can't find these fruits her at all. I am going to email Roberta's and see what they can tell me. If you have the time you should check out there stuff at QVC online. Maybe you could give me a better opinion. The fruit are not huge and I can tell that they wouldn't take as long to ripen as some of the other grapfruits, and the claim that you don't need to sweeten the fruit just makes it sound more appealing. Not that I do have to sweeten grapefruit. I just buy the sweetest variety I can buy from the local supermarket. Thanks for the help and I will keep you posted.
Andrew

Okay guys. For some clarity, I just rewatched the clip for this fruit on Roberta's program. This is notthe same cross as the honeybell at all. The exact cross is between the frua mandarin and the chinese pummelo. It was done between 1950-1951 at the University of Berkley, California. The fruit has sub acid flavor with vanilla and grapefruit flavor. The tree is a sub dwarf growing to 5ft tall with a 3ft spread. Blooming thru out the year, main crop ready to pick around January. Sounds great to me, I am now ready to change my order. Maybe now that you guys have the correct information you may be able to find this cross.
Andrew

it looks green like the citrus from the picture ch3rri posted up with the Asian fruitstand

Mangokush,
I am glad you liked it. I changed my order yesterday to this fruit instead of honeybell. Your reviews of the fruit were the same as Roberta's. I can't wait to get this tree now!
Andrew

Mangokush,
One thing I forgot to ask, was the fruit very seedy or just average? By the looks of your fruit it looks average. I am not sure if you saw my previous post but I had stated the same about the cross.
Andrew

Andrew,

that was a blog by someone named Meg, the link at the bottom will take you to her site where the original article is.

I never tried it

Bryan

The picture shows a fair amount of seeds. I would say that it is borderline, for me at least, on the seedy/not-seedy desirability scale. Not enough seeds to automatically exclude it from my grow list......but the flavor better be pretty darned good to support dealing with the seeds that are there.

Harry

Hello Harry,
Well I did order it and confirmed the switch from the honeybell to this. I should have it by mid-May and hopefully it grows faster then my moro blood orange! For me, sweet oranges grow at a snail pace, but lemon and lime grow very fast. Is it the same for Florida growers? I was just surprised that the keylime which is supposed to be more tropical then the moro orange was WAY more vigorous.
For people like tasty, QVC may be able to give access to some tropical fruits. I know they sell lemon, lime, orange, tangerine, and olive, papaya and last year they even had pineapple plants. I have been satisfied with there trees they have sent me. I also ordered 2 plumeria cuttings. They gurantee these cuttings for 90 days, so I hope I can get them to root and grow before the 90 ends.
Andrew

Harry, Have you ever tried the GA3 powder on your citrus? You spray the blooms with it and it produces seedless fruit. I bought it to use on my "Page" trees. Works great.

John:

No.....haven't ever tried it. The limited citrus I am growing right now has no major seed issue. But thanks for the thought....there was a time that I destroyed trees because they produced fruit with too many seeds to warrant growing them. If I get back into citrus, I'll definitely give it a try.

Harry

i love Duncan which is extremely seedy.

i can see it get annoying with larger harvests. guess i will have to buy a nice press juicer

Hello everyone,
Today I had to go to Buffalo and get my staples out from my back surgery. Boy am I happy those suckers are out! Now my abdomen can heal. Anyways stopped at a Wegmans and went to check out there produce. They had HUGE pummelos but they were $3.99 each! I was not paying that much but guess what was right next to them! Cocktail grapefruits! I could tell they were a lil pass there prime so I grabbed the 3 that looked the best. I couldn't wait to get home so I peeled it in the car and ate it. My first thought was that is was very sweet and juicy but it did have a fair amount of seeds. I didn't complain. The flesh was light orange and it did have a faint bitterness to it. I wonder if the bitterness comes with the fruit being past its prime. No matter to me, it is a definate keeper. I have a new favorite grapefruit!! I will say that the fruits are smaller then grapefruit at least the ones I bought. I would say they were the size of a medium navel. I will take a picture of the one fruit I have left. I am happy that I decided to go with this fruit tree instead!
Andrew