Hello, everyone. New to the site & hoping to lean on more experienced gardeners to help me in my own gardening journey.
I purchased a Weeping Dragon Orange Tree because I wanted fruit, liked its structure and it fit my somewhat limited yard.
Upon purchase, I saw it was okay for zones 6-11, which I am 7b, but thinking about planting in-ground. Anyone have experience with one of these trees in a similar zone? I can keep it in a container, but bringing it indoors can be a chore, along with the other containers I need to fit in my space.
Also, I assumed these were edible oranges, so I’m curious about it being an ornamental tree. From my understanding, ornamental plants are generally not edible?
The Weeping Dragon is a really interesting ornamental that I was able to see for the first time yesterday. I asked the owner of Madison Citrus Nursery if they were able to try the fruit but they have not held on the plants yet.
Judging from its parents and appearance, the fruit will almost certainly be highly acidic and similar in taste to other Citranges or the trifoliate orange itself. Most 50% trifoliate orange hybrids are good enough to process for juice or preserves at least.
I think it should be a good choice for an outdoor, edible-ornamental that maintains a smaller footprint in zone 7b. I think most of these are grafted onto the dwarf rootstock, Flying Dragon.
At least in the citrus world, there is a lot of overlap between edible and ornamental, so they are not mutually exclusive. However, your personal definition of edible might vary. I consider edible as being quite literally edible, but not necessarily tasty. Then, I like to distinguish by saying eatable if something is actually worth eating.
Every hardy citrus is edible, but not all of them are eatable These fruit should not be consumed if you have an allergy to citrus fruit or if you are on medication which grapefruit would normally interfere with.
Also you can just pick the fruit and leave it on the table to make a room smell nice. Its required to extract any juice anyway so thats a nice benifit.
Oh, no. You said, “grapefruit!” I love grapes and I love fruit, but grapefruit…not so much. Either way, should I get any, I can share them. Plus, it’s a very pretty tree! Thanks for that information. Perhaps sometime next year, I’ll have something to report so far as “eatable.”
Excellent ideas. I had spruce pine tips in water for the first time this spring and enjoyed it very much. Although, it wasn’t as pleasant allowing it to sit overnight. Perhaps there’s hope!
this might mess up your asthetics but you could always graft a eatable citrus to this tree. i grafted a mountain ash tree to 3 kinds of pears. its growing pears as we speak. welcome to the site!
Haha, yes there’s some shared compounds. You don’t always notice those flavors but sometimes you do. I would be interested to hear a report on this one!
I joined the site because I’m curious about grafting, so I like the idea from a distance. I just don’t know anywhere near enough about the nuances of grafting to do it. I did already buy a knife though!
My goal is to practice on some rose bushes with the real goal being to graft a pear tree I bought with one of the cordons missing (50% off). It’s three rows, each its own variety, but the bottom row is missing the opposite side.
good idea on practicing. before i started to come on here i wanted to try but didnt know enough. through encouragement on here and watching tutorials, i was finally successful. apples and pears are pretty easy . start with a cleft graft. its not as pretty as whip and tongue but alot easier to do.
So as far as I know, I haven’t got one yet, the juice is much stronger than lemon juice, but good and no problem, the rinds have some strange compounds and even latex type stuff and you can’t zest them and should be very careful about who you serve them to as marmalade or an extracted peel or anything like that.
I try to be open minded and give strange things a whirl, but the trifoliate orange I’ve sampled I would only consider to be technically edible. Even slicing the fruit in half will gunk up your blade with resin that soap and hot water does not much to remove. I squeezed some and decanted (reverse decanted?) the juice underneath away from the piney soft in top and it was sour and bitter and not really worth the hassle to me.
If you want to try some fruit early, I found a tree listed on inaturalist.com on public property and picked like thirty of them. Neither animals nor people seemed interested. One fruit has like 25 seeds, so you can start a bunch of seedlings pretty easily.
I have one growing next to a Snowball Pepper plant. It’s job is to make sure the peppers don’t look too perfect. I assume the lighter color on the new growth is from too much water.
As a side note, Citrus trifoliata is considered invasive in a bunch of southern states (which may or may not mean anything in your state). Not sure which state you’re in, but it should be able to spread by seed in zone 7b.
The well-meaning previous owner of my property planted a very beautiful Asian wisteria. It is a lovely plant until it is growing up the sides of your house, shed, garage, etc and destroying the siding and gutters and you can’t remove it and it spreads like wildfire and grows very fast.
Or the bamboo they planted, which is always trying to take over and as it grows into the wooded sections it kills all the trees and everything non-bamboo.
So I’d be a bit wary of putting that one in the ground.
Unfortunately I see that you already bought it, but there are lots of options for you to grow cold hardy citrus, mostly trifoliate hyprids, and get much better fruit!
And I wish it were easier to trade because I’d happily buy you a Prague sweet citrus, and take that one off you to plant at my sister’s new home, 6a verging on 5b, but I’m too far away to pick it up and shipping isn’t worth it.
I hope you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for in this list.
After what Benthegirl said, I’m ready to take the pruner right to the base & save myself fertilizer that I’m using on it. In all seriousness, I really hope it’s not invasive here in SE Washington. Here I was thinking how lucky I was that the shipper accidentally put two plants in the pot.
Eh I can’t speak to weeping dragon, but the flying dragon (pure trifoliate orange i believe) fruit I tried last year was interesting and (to my taste) not bad. It was seedy, and the resin gunking up the knife was surprising/annoying (next time I’ll know to try alcohol to clear the resin instead of dish soap) but I could see using it as a flavoring for cooking or something you might use lemon in.
That said, I am the weird guy that likes to eat lemon slices on the table like they are oranges, and if I could grow both in ground in my zone I would still choose lemon over trifoliate orange for eating, but for a tree that I can actually grow in 6b/7a and that looks (and smells) nice, I don’t have plans to give my little plant the axe anytime soon.
That said I also wouldn’t put my trifoliate orange in a prime spot for sun/etc in my small yard since there are much better fruit that grow in my zone… I would consider it before a lot of non-edibles if I had a spot I wanted to dissuade people from walking through since it has some serious weaponry (thorns) on it along with its fascinating growth habit.
These fruit should not be consumed if you have an allergy to citrus fruit or if you are on medication which grapefruit would normally interfere with.
I assume the lighter color on the new growth is from too much water.
