I have bought some loquat seeds from 'Adam Karsten. I will buy some scion from him later when my root stocks are ready, a lot of people have bought scion from him and are very happy with their purchases.
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Which varieties only flower in the spring?
Thank you for your time
No such thing. Some may open flowers late but all buds are set at the end of summer.
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You’ve crushed my dreams, but it’s for the best.
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I’ve grown all the varieties that supposedly set flowers in spring. But they all budded out in late summer like everything else.
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It depends on what you mean by flower, the thing about Loquats is that they form flower buds at about the same time, a few weeks later than the others at the most. Even though closed flower buds are ofthen way less cold sensitive they are still more cold sensitive than the trees them selves can be, if you have a cold hardy tree. What is good about the ones that open the flowers later, is that the flowers opening can miss the coldest part of the year, and in some cases that can mean having a crop when the earlier opening flower varieties can not, although some later opening flower varieties have cold sensitive flower buds, or less cold resistant open flowers. As far as actual cold hardiness, I am too new at it to give you any advise on that.
From my own experience loquat panicles with closed flowers can survive about 19F. So they do survive some mild winters here but once they start to bloom in the spring, all they need is 25F and they are gone.
This autumn was really bad for loquats cause it was too warm and they started to bloom in October/November. I might never see fruit (maybe once in 10 years) but they make a nice privacy screen and it’s nice to look how green they are when everything else is grey so I appreciate them a lot 
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I like my peluche loquat soo much that i think it’s difficult to have a better one… 
The numbers I’ve heard are -5c for closed flowers and -3c for open. (23F and 27F)
that’s a Christmas loquat if I remember correctly.
Luis, I have a better varieties than peluche fruit taste. But peluche is the largest loquat fruits I grow. I do have an Italian variety which is very close in size as the peluche but it tastes much better. I took brix reading on peluche last year, it was 10. I didn’t have my brix meter (refractometer) last year until after some varieties were done. The Italian loquat (Imperiale) largest single fruit was 99grams. Largest Peluche for me was 90grams but a friend had one fruit that was 120grams.
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PM sent…
Don’t give up hope yet. I have most of the cold hardy varieties but I’m growing them here in Southern California so we never have the frost, snow issues. I just collect all that I’m interested in so I added some cold hardy varieties.
Ram is correct as far as I noticed on my loquat trees grafted with:
-Shambala
-Novak (does not have multiple flowering in a year)
-Tanaka
-Christmas (blooms in spring, fruits in VA)
-Angelino/Argelina
These varieties still has flowers bloom around the same time, and fruits ripen here from April-July.
But the good news is, one of my seedling tree (older-7yrs old maybe) which is fruiting good had ripe fruits this year in January. Then I checked on it this week and it has a second round of ripe fruits (looks like main crop) so this year it seems to be having two different times in the year when the fruits are fully ripe.
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Hi @alanmercieca – any update on your work with spring blooming / cold hardy loquats in NC? Did any of your trees have buds/blooms survive this winter? It was pretty rough. Any hope for low maintenance loquats in our region yet, or is it only for the deeply committed?
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There is a (assumed seedling) loquat tree growing in manteo, NC festival park which I took a scion off to graft which has taken I’m calling “festival”. The reason I mention it, is it had blooms much much later than mine. Like when I got it last month it still had blooms to open yet, which in turn could help ripen fruit more often out your way. I’ll keep y’all posted how it goes here. It has indeed been a cold winter in NC, a later blooming variety than mine (nov-dec) could certainly help I bet. On a somewhat related note it had dozens of seedlings growing under it that would be easy to pull up and pot.
Grafted to one of my many potted seedlings to make sure the graft took.
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We finally planted the root stock for the project last autumn, and so far in the ground they look unbothered, still have the leaves on. One of them the leaves turn purplish in the cold weather. Both loquat trees came from seeds that originated from fruit that came from the same gold nugget loquat tree.
I started out with 6 seedlings all from the same gold nugget tree, only two could deal with the cold here.
I have not added any varieties to either of the trees yet, I am hoping to do that this spring.
I will try to take photos when it’s not so cold during the day.
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Glad to see you’re both still working on it and it’s going well. Thanks for the updates!
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I will for sure be grafting some material from that loquat at the JC Raulston, that one blooms from Nov-Jan. It’ll be interesting to compare it with other late-blooming varieties. Ideally, someone will find a variety that blooms in March or April…
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Yeah and if you’d like I can get you pollen from this one and send it in a few years if you intend to breed some.
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I might just ask you for scion wood in the meantime.
I’ve heard Shambhala can sometimes repeat bloom like piera, but unlike piera which will never make it into the US, Shambhala is readily available, so that’s another one I’ll probably try to get at some point.
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