I would like to clone my lemon and lime tree.Help

[clucas]

I need to know how to take and root cuttings from them. I have tryed once with three cuttings from each and failed. I have heard it can be done? I have had no luck yet. Thanks Rich

[Marley1372]

Parthenocarpic fruit is set without a fertilized ovary, which leads to a seedless fruit, like bananas. Not trying to be a jerk like *certain* people, just a public service announcement.

Toad

[David Ross]

If you tie gauze bags around the flower buds and carefully remove the anthers as soon as the flowers start to open, you might be able to obtain apomictic seeds from the fruit (seeds produced without pollination). Citrus very often yield fertile apomictic seeds. These would indeed produce plants the same as their parents.

The usual way to propagate citrus is to create a rootstock from a seedling (which often is unlike its parents if the flowers were pollinated) and then graft or bud the desired variety onto the rootstock.

With a somewhat incompatible rootstock, you can create dwarf trees from varieties that are normally not dwarfed. That is how my 'Eureka' lemon, 'Robertson' navel orange, and kumquat are all dwarfed. I have had the lemon more than 35 years, and it's about 3 feet from soil to top. Yet it bears full-sized lemons; one year I got over 60 lemons from it.

However, all three of my citrus were bought from a nursery. While I'm generally successful with rooting perennial cuttings, I have very poor luck with woody plants. I have never been successful with either budding or grafting.