To clarify above: I do want all my trees to reach good size at maturity; 7ft tall and wide will be ideal.

Flying dragon isn't just a cool contorting type. It's also a slower growing shorter type.

You do not want kumquat on flying dragon. That much is true. Meyer is borderline.

I have citrus dwarfs. They do not get over three feet tall. The semis get eight feet tall.

Pip. Thank you so much for correcting me. How stupid am I. I'll stop adding comments for the sake of not rubbing my ignorance off on others.

Don't know why your acting like a duche, but calm down.

Meyer lemons grow nice on either then in 5 years they decline and die. There is some kind of toxic shock syndrome that sets in the graft The ML is a bush anyway. Meiwa should bee grown on trifoliata full size. The others could be on flying dragon so no or little need to prune to size.

Tim, are your flying dragons in ground? From the trails I've read they should in fact grow to 8 feet, but very, very slowly.

im just curious if your trees are young or in pots. If not I'd be curious about that too. I've read a lot of studies but in ground isn't something I'm able to do.

Flying dragon? Is that the rootstock? Either way, I don't know.

Yeah they are rootstock. I assumed when you said dwarf they were on flying dragon. I should have asked where you bought them.

I grew up on the remains of one of the old orange groves in the San Gabriel valley of LA. We had a mandarin which looked like a Satsuma. It was there when my father bought the land and they lived there for 25 years so it was at least 40+ years old the last time I saw it. It was on flying dragon root stock, I know because there was a sucker that grew from it and that was how I learned about grafting and dwarfing rootstock when I was about 13 years old. No one ever pruned that tree, it was about 4-5 feet tall.

The Meiwa is not going to get large as a standard.

The Powell and the Cara Cara will naturally be large so using a Semi-Dwarfing rootstock will help keep them manageable. The Moro will get almost as big. My preference for those would be C-35 and prune to keep them about 8-10' tall and wide.

A Standard Meyer at a friends house was planted 25 years ago and is about 10' tall but tries to be wider than that. I planted standards as I was concerned that anything smaller would not grow big enough to espalier against a 6' block wall.

I can't imagine using Flying Dragon for anything as it will grow so slowly, you will need to wait many years to see much growth.

Many of these varieties have compatibility issues with different rootstocks so thinking that you are going to decide on the best one and then use it on all varieties will not work out well in the long run. You need to talk to a grower that knows the requirements for you area.

What originally was called Dwarf was gradually mostly called Semi-Dwarf as you are not really limiting the eventual size of the tree as mostly picking a slower growing tree. Dwarfs are also trimmed more into a bush shape that I don't find looking right. A Meyer trimmed as a Semi-Dwarf Bush shape will natrually want to be 15' wide and 5' tall.

what about Cuban Shaddock. What is the grouth pattern of a Cuban shaddock and will it cause the scion to grow the same

Cuban shaddock is a big tree, but when grown in a pot is dwarf. I've read a lot of complaints about four winds trees not being dwarf when planted in ground in California.

Yeah, they're not at dwarfing as trifoliate, but they do dwarf somewhat.

I'd say citrus in the ground on Cuban Shaddock are more semi-dwarf in the ground. It does make them grow slower also.

The scions died on both my Cuban Shaddock. Will the tree be big and tall or more wide than tall. If it is a tall tree then I will need to graft a kumquat to it. If it is wide I can grow it for the fruit.

Steve my Cuban Shaddock in the ground is more wide than tall. It's about 4 feet tall but 5 feet wide. However I wouldn't use it as an average growth gauge because it was totally neglected for at least 10 years or more before we moved in. No water at all in the summer and no feeding at all. I started to water and feed it the last few years and it's grown a lot more leaves but hasn't gotten much taller. It's probably stunted now.

The fruit was large like a pumelo, thinner skin than a pumelo but thicker than a lemon. It was fairly juicy with a lot of seeds, but the juice was pretty good. Very lemony, a little less sour than typical lemons, but more sour than a Meyer. It made pretty decent lemonade.

Here's a picture from the UCR collection. It's in the ground and definitely taken better care of than mine. It also looks wider than tall to me.

http://www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/cuban_shaddock.html

For size comparison, the fruit is usually about 6-8" in diameter.