As many of you know this will be a short list of trees like Clem x Yuzu Tangerine Tree aka Ten-Degree.
I planned to update this list more soon but @themulberries offerred to help us faster which we all greatly appreciate.
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The Ten-Degree mandarin (also known as the 10-Degree Tangerine or Clem-Yuzu 2-2) features a distinctively tart, sweet-and-sour flavor profile resembling lemonade, which contrasts sharply with the straightforward sugary sweetness of traditional commercial mandarins. Developed by Dr. J.R. Brown in Texas during the 1960s, this unique hybrid is a cross between a Spanish Clementine and an ancient Japanese Yuzu. It is highly prized for its exceptional cold-hardiness down to 10°F rather than its ability to match the refined, seedless texture of modern supermarket cultivars.
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I like this idea, no matter how wishful. For me i would be very happy with hardiness to 20 degrees. Most the cold hardy citrus i have tried have been killed off in that range.
In my fig house, which is where i experiment with citrus, the Meyer lemon is the only survivor.
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This is not an all-encompassing list, and hardiness varies based on tree age and your specific climate, but here is some data we compiled from our experiences here in the Southeast:
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These are very good lists! You saved me a huge amount of time! Glad I could buy something from you today. I dont know all of the varieties but I do have a lot of them.
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My goal is to make the list a little bigger each year! We should have information, either in a video or some other form, about all of those varieties. A few didn’t make the cut for our home orchard, but we still have nearly 80 varieties growing!
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That is very impressive! I likely half 50-60 types of citrus. Some are very high quality that I grow because I want to , and not really for its cold tolerance. Many are types I grow for hardiness.
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That is still an excellent variety. I suppose that number could be much higher but it is restricted by being mostly hardy varieties as even our greenhouse trees resist cold enough to survive without supplemental heat.
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huh - wow. I would love to know where to get some of these to try. @themulberries are these seed grown? rootstock?
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I would talk with @themulberries about what he offers. Try these nurseries to start with. I will warn you ahead of time the rabbit hole is deep, and plant addicts like all of us love this stuff!
@a_Vivaldi highly recommended the one below in some older threads. That was close enough to a guarantee for me to make my first order.
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I think you will enjoy the list above. As mentioned the 10 degree tangerine tastes like lemonade. I like lemonade as many of us do, but if you hate lemons or lemonade I would skip that one. Many times people think lemons are bad quality because they are not sugar belle. Those who want sugar belle should get that one and its pretty cold tolerant as well at 26F. Most citrus is pretty cold tolerant. Really very good quality mandarins like owari tolerate 15F. Prague is quite a fruit for zone 7 growers!
Prague
10 degree tangerine
Sudachi & yuzu - not for fresh eating these are for the kitchen.
These are some of the wild relatives also very hardy that swingle made crosses with.
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jcf, same experience here, Meyer lemon is the stubborn survivor. Everything else I’ve tried at that temperature range either struggled badly or gave up after a hard winter. The list from themulberries is really useful, didn’t realise Ten-Degree had that kind of fruit quality.
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Ten Degree Tangerine is tasty but seedy. If it was seedless it would be a hit! It’s like a Clementine but with some faint Yuzu aromatics. Very interesting.
We have a spreadsheet on our website with (mostly) up to date inventory on everything. We grow some from seed, and some from cuttings, but most are grafted on Trifoliate Orange rootstock.
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My first and still one of my favorite hardy citrus is the Thomasville. This is one I grafted for my neighbor from my tree. Its super productive and flowers in waves. It just finished the last one. The rootstock is not even flying dragon but it started flowering so early that it had stayed very small and manageable.
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One of my favorites also, like meiwa kumquat it won’t stop blooming! My Thomasville is blooming right now again.
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There was a discussion recently about the ripening time for Kabosu. With all the different hardy citrus threads that have suddenly appeared, I wasn’t able to find which one it was. Regardless, this is thread is a decent one to post this in since Kabosu is probably hardy to something close to 10 F.
I harvested my first Kabosu fruits today. I picked two, here are each of them. Compared to a regular lime, they’re a bit smaller or about the same size. Very seedy.
While not entirely colored on the inside, and almost entirely green on the outside, the fruit are pretty clearly ripening up and pretty far along. The smaller one was drier but more colored. The acidity was very low for a lime, honestly even lower than a ripe Meyer Lemon. The flavor is lime, as is the zest. It’s more aromatic than the store bought lime but that’s to be expected. Not sure how the aroma would compare with a fresh lime, probably very similar.
Judging by the color, juice content, and acid to sugar ratio, I’d reckon in my climate I might actually want to start picking these in July… But August they’re getting close to too ripe for an acid citrus.
So yeah, it’s definitely a very early ripening citrus.
I used them as best I could given their Japanese origin.
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Those look great! I can’t wait to hear the results of what those seeds grow like for you also!
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I threw the seeds away.
Kabosu, like all other Yuzu adjacent citrus (Yuzu, Sudachi, Kabosu, Clem-Yuz, Ichang lemon) has nucellar seeds. Given that, I did not perform controlled crosses on it in the spring, so it likely either selfed or was pollinated by some nearby citrus like clementine. So even if I did grow out these seeds and got a very lucky zygotic seedling, it wouldn’t be from a very useful cross anyway. Kabosu is generally considered less hardy than Yuzu so Kabo-Clem would mostly be an inferior version of Clem-yuz anyway.
I plan to one day use Kabosu as a male parent in some crosses, but it’s not a priority. I have no plans to ever use it as a female parent since it’s neither fully cold hardy in my zone nor a high quality fruit (and so isn’t really worth fighting the odds with nucellar embryos, at least not for me).
If Kabosu was fully zone 8 hardy then maybe I’d consider it, but it isn’t.
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