Hi Itsa, Have you seen trees of colorful, well-formed lemons in your area? It may be that, like in southern Florida, the climate simply promotes that type of growth. Our true lemons are as you describe -- big, lumpy, green things that would not sell well as fresh fruit in a grocery store, but which make excellent juice (and lots of it). Lemon really is adapted to a more Mediterranean climate (lower humidity, winter rainy season, much larger day/night temperature differential), from the standpoint of making beautiful fruit, and in a consistently warm, humid, rainy climate, they become green lumpy things.

On the other hand, there is the possibility that your tree is not the right variety, and could be "rough lemon" (Citrus jambhiri), or even some other variety. You might do a Google image search to see how it matches that.

But I really suspect you've got a normal lemon tree that is just behaving as is normal for a tropical climate.

Malcolm Manners
John and Ruth Tyndall Professor of Citrus Science
Florida Southern College
Lakeland

Thank you, Malcolm, for taking an interest and responding. My cousin who lives in my neighborhood has a productive lemon tree -- and, while her lemons are not picture perfect, they at least turn yellow and are juicy. The lemons I got from our tree last year never turned yellow at all and yielded very little juice. My husband thinks the soil the tree is planted in may be too heavy and slow to drain (the soil beneath the lime tree is much lighter, and the tree seems much happier). We also have dwarf orange and grapefruit trees which are just starting to fruit. So far the fruit looks smooth and normal. It only seems to be the lemons that are lumpy! I will look for pictures online as you suggest to compare with mine. Thanks!