Calamondins are a very bitter, little fruit.Not good for eating straight for most people but are excellent in cooking recipes and marmalade's. They are also very hardy and in my experience, very easy to grow. Mine is my oldest tree. I purchased a meyer lemon and a calamondin at the same time, and the meyer died. I treated them exactly the same. I am waiting on my clementine to show up. Clemetines are sweet and some are seedless, but I do not have personal experience growing one yet. Meyers are finicky little trees. Read ALOT of these forums before you take the dive with a meyer! I say start with one of the others. Get some experience. I am on my second meyer lemon and it is doing much better.

I wouldn't call calamondin bitter, but the inside is definitely lemon-like while the peel itself is sweet, rather like a kumquat. At least, my tree was like that. I would sometimes eat them off the tree, or put one in my tea, but mostly I made marmalade with it. I gave it away because I didn't eat the marmalade as fast as the tree produced fruit! I would like to get a clementine or similar now.

Hi Zanna B. Welcome to wondeful world of citrus.

If you want an regular orange tasting fruit, between the two Clemintine is the one. Calamondin fruit (inside of the peel) is sour like a lemon/lime. Not many would want to grab a Calamondin and eat it whole (I do however and enjoy it very much).

With that being said, I would still recommend Calamondin as a first time citrus tree. It's kind of forgiving, as far as citrus trees goes. It will be happier indoors than a Clementine, in my experience, if you bring it indoors for winter. The fruit is useful, though sour, you just have to use it correctly. I find the fruit very useful to be honest. Also, Calamondin trees are pretty and more active than a Celementine. It's either blooming and/or fruiting most all the time.

Just my two cents.

Hi Zanna- I have grown both in containers. Calamondin is much easier to grow and quite fun. I wasn't all that crazy about the fruit, but it produced a lot of fruit within a year or two. Clementine is much more difficult. I am on year 5 now and just getting my first fruit. I would go Calamondin.

Go with a Meiwa kumquat instead It will outstrip either of the Clementine or calamondin. The meiwa has a sweet skin with sour interior when picked green just turning. If pick halfway to ripe it has a sweet skin and a sweet/tart middle and it is sweet inside and out when fully ripe. A Fukushu kumquat is good to.

Fukushu kumquat#2 · More Info

Fukushu kumquat#2 · More Info

I am in agreement that the Clementine is much harder to grow and less attractive

6b Steve