Apparently the Meyer lemon is the lemon of choice for many. I once bought what I thought were Meyers but they weren’t. What a letdown; especially when the bag was misleadingly tagged as such.
I continued to keep a lookout for them, but could only find regular ones.
Fast forward a few years ….
I was in Vegas a few weeks ago when I was told that my cousin had a lemon tree. You can pretty much guess the exchange that took place …
“Are there lemons on the tree? May I pick a few?” My cousin assured me I could but said they were not 100% lemon. “They’re a cross between a lemon and an orange,” he said.
Ding! … Ding!
I’m not a casino-goer but this must be how it feels to hit the jackpot. My cousin had the Meyer lemon!
I arrived at my cousin’s to see the Meyer. It looked like a massive cocoon, covered to protect the tender tree from the frost. “We’ve already picked most of the lemons but there are some left,” he said.
I peeled the covers off the swaddled tree. It seemed almost as momentous as the unveiling of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I gawked at the big juicy baubles before swaddling the tree once again for the night. I’d have a better look the next morning.
If the lemons had been enticing the day before, they were even more irresistible the next morning. My cousin handed me a pair of secateurs and I selected and cut a number of lemons and cuttings. Oh, joy, joy!
So, how do the lemons compare? I find the Meyer lemon from my cousin’s tree bigger, juicier and less acidic than regular lemons. And while I always struggle to squeeze the juice from a lemon, I had no trouble at all with the Meyer lemon.
Would I grow a Meyer lemon tree? If I could, yes, without a doubt.
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Care and propagation: Morning sun, well-drained soil, water regularly. Best grafted, it is possible to propagate using seeds or cuttings
Meyer lemon on the left, regular lemon on the right
Excellent
Such gorgeous lemons
They are a nice lemon. My mother always advised me to plant a Meyer lemon but of course like you, were the hell to find one in Asia.
I was assured the Chinese all grow them in pots, where the Meyer lemon originally came from. So when in China I looked all over the place in the citrus areas and nothing really looked like one. Many had extremely long fruit, very attractive but Meyer it had to be. I also discovered there was an “improved Meyer”, resistant to some lethal lemon disease. So I decided to hold out for one of those.
Few years later I did eventually find one in Tasmania where I was visiting, it was grafted onto something else. I planted it and it grew very well into a small tree and bore a preposterous large crop for such a tiny tree. Before the lemons were ripe I managed to kill it. I decided to treat it with a fungicide as we were in the middle of the wet monsoon. It didn’t like that at all and withered and died. I was quite upset but decided a silver Phoenix sylvestris palm could take it’s place, and it does look stunning. But I wanted a pretty little tree covered in those bright yellow fruit more than anything. Im happy to buy lemons but I think they look so gorgeous on the tree of dark dark green leaves, highly decorative.
When I went back to Tasmania two years later they no longer had Meyer lemons so I bought another lemon, a commercial variety grafted onto dwarf stock. This one now only in it’s second year is growing nicely and slowly with a lovely shape unassisted by me, like a bonsai Locust bean tree. Already covered in it’s first little perfectly formed small dark green lemons and flowering with big bright white pink reversed flowers at the same time. I love it. Big flowers and lemons at the same time what could be more charming. It’s a “Eureka” seedless grafted onto a “flying Dragon” root stock. So that sounds good.
Just to test I bought Meyers lemons from the supermarket. Quite rare as they never have them as they don’t travel well. Sure enough It was difficult to find three that weren’t very soft. These were flushed pale orange in colour (very lovely) quite thin skinned and roundish and smelt gorgeous like tangerine meets lemon. Not for fish and chips as they’re too sweet but would make very nice lemonade and desserts. I used one’s juice in a fruit salad but the other two fermented inside rapidly, matter of two days and weren’t yummy anymore. I think for me Im going to prefer the Eureka as I like lemon zest and I would like the pretty lemons to keep well primarily on the tree until I need one, so a thicker tougher skin might be better. I have a feeling the Meyer might not do that so well in the tropics. I have mandarine trees they produce tiny little thinned skinned firm fruit which is honey sweet so think thats it for the citrus side of thing. Though a lime might be pretty one of those variegated limes……
Giant swallow tailed butterflies I mean really monsters the size of kites like citrus here for laying eggs on, producing mammoth sausage sized bright green and white smooth caterpillars that munch on the new leaves. The babies are cryptic and look exactly like bird poo! I now exactly what to remove by hand now and only once did I get real bird poo by mistake. If you grip the larger green ones they shoot out a black forked tongue from the top of their heads like a snake, it trembles and flickers. Perfectly harmless but a brilliant disguise along with huge painted faux eyes. I gently relocate them onto the big mandarine trees when I find them on my treasured lemon.