Most of the greater Los Angeles area should be hot enough for cocktail grapefruit to grow and they do get sweeter the longer they are left on the tree. The Cocktail Grapefruit also known as the Mandelo is a medium to large fruit with a thin deep yellow skin and heavily seeded flesh. Its mild flavor explains its “cocktail” appellation since it is the preferred grapefruit variety among bartenders for drinks that call for grapefruit juice.Ĭocktail grapefruit grow wherever conventional grapefruit grow, although fruit quality is best, as with grapefruits generally, in desert or semi-desert conditions.
You can split cocktail fruit in half and eat the sections for breakfast with a spoon but, due to its seediness, some would rather use it exclusively for juice. The skin, which may be golden orange, yellow, or yellow-green, is also thin, making the juicing process, should you go that route, easier than with conventional grapefruit and its much thicker rind. They are often smaller, sometimes just half the size of regular grapefruit but can be larger, too. This is why people generally go to nurseries when thinking of procuring a fruit tree, since nursery trees are clonally propagated from known varieties and already producing fruit.Ĭocktail grapefruit are juicier and sweeter (less acidic) than regular grapefruit. The problem is that you will have to wait 5-8 years to see the first fruit and there is still no guarantee as to its quality. With the exception of clementines, if you plant a seed from a citrus fruit – from an orange, a tangerine, a lemon, a grapefruit, or a lime – you may grow a tree whose fruit resembles that of the mother plant.
What distinguishes citrus from other fruit is that they sometimes breed true from seed, whereas apples, peaches, and plums, for example, never do. The citrus cultivars that are familiar to us are hybrids or hybrids of hybrids of three ancestral plants: mandarin (progenitor of citrus fruit bearing orange peels), pummelo (resembling a large grapefruit), and citron (roughly similar in appearance to a lemon). My question is: do you know where can I find one?”Ĭocktail grapefruit is also referred to as a mandelo since, as you suggest, it is a cross between a MANDarin cultivar and a pummELO. I’d love to have a cocktail grapefruit tree. It was so delicious! I was told it was a cross between a pummelo and a mandarin. She called it a “cocktail grapefruit” and it was sweeter, milder and juicier than any grapefruit I had ever tasted. One of these plants is a citrus tree I had never heard of until a short time ago when it was brought to my attention in an email from Sandra Shirley, who gardens in Loma Linda: “Several years ago,” Shirley wrote, “a friend shared the most amazing grapefruit with me. “The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” These words of Thomas Jefferson are precious to me since I have long felt that I can provide no more important service to you, dear reader of this column, than to bring to your attention unfamiliar plants which, were they to flourish in your garden, could well enhance your quality of life.
0 kommentar(er)
