I'm afraid that while Logee's explanation sounds plausible, it is completely wrong.

Citrus does not have male or female flowers. Each flower contains both the 'male' pollen and the 'female' ovule.

Also most citrus do not require pollination - the ovule develops into a fruit regardless of pollination, so the paint brush is a waste of time! That's why it is described as self-fertile, not because of male and female flowers.

However, it is still possible that a next flush will not have the sterile flowers.

If your plant is a cutting it should form fruits exactly like the mother plant did. But I suspect it was a seedling and has some genetic fault.

Hi. I have an esrog tree that i started from seed about five years ago. After two years i had a flowering with all imperfect flowers. the next year i actually got a about ten whole flowers and ended up harvesting some esrogim. this year only one complete flower. now its flowering again and i am hoping for more complete flowers. I know of people who have never gotten a complete flower. I have seen these trees being sold with flowers on them all of them incomplete. If you look online you will find pictures of esog flowers that are clearly incomplete. Don't give up yet though!

if you look on wikipedia for "citron" you will see:

"The following description on citron was given by Theophrastus ( c. 371 – c. 287 BC)

"'And it bears its fruit at all seasons, for when some have gathered, the flower of the others is on the tree and is ripening others. Of the flowers I have said[42]those that have a sort of distaff [meaning the pistil] projecting from the middle are fertile, while those that do not have this are sterile.'"

Obviously, this plant has a tendency to produce these imperfect flowers and seems to have had this tendency since antiquity! I for one think that it shows how well we Jews have carried on our traditions.

I can show you pictures of my flowers with and without the female parts. I do wish we had some way to encourage stimulate the tree to produce more perfect flowers.

Thank you @Yossb, I am not going to give up on this tree. It's far too important to my collection now! I absolutely love it! I would love to see your trees & pics of the flowers too. I don't know many people with these trees at all. I wish there was a book on citrus I could find to learn more about them, this one in particular. Other than the flowers being sterile the tree is pretty and seems to be in good health. It lost a lot of leaves this past spring after we had some high winds & it's bouncing back now leaves after leaves seem to be coming in. I have a pretty big collection of citrus trees, plenty of fruits from those ones to tide me over till this one is happy. I know Logee's of Danielson CT carries Etrogs and they indeed do have flowers that produce fruit. I might pick one of those up and get it going too.. just in case this never fruits. I will also talk to them & find out what they're feeding it and report back.

My pleasure @ aktie99. I am a religious Jew. I don't know if you are too so I'm giving you some background. The esrog is very important to us. I know many people who pay over $100 for a nice one for the Sukkot holiday (when we are required to have it) and even know of people who pay as much as $300. For us, the pedigree of the Esrog is very important and I would not be able to buy an Esrog tree at a gardening store as I would want it to have certification from Rabbis (or a well known Jewish owner) that I trust that it is the real thing. There are a few famous "brands" of esrog that have a tradition going way back. Mine is called "Braverman"

Because of all this, many Jews have the idea of trying to grow one at home. Being amateurs, with no access to actual cuttings that would give them a clone of the tree, we are forced to use seeds. Just in my community I know of a few people who have tried. I have tried to get more info from fellow amateurs but no one seems any wiser than i am and certainly i seem to have been more successful that most in actually having had a few to harvest for this past Sukkot.

I don't know much more than I've already posted in the first post, but i can tell you that the advice you got from Logees (well meant though it may have been) is misinformed, as citrange2 has already pointed out.

I keep my tree indoors in the winter (i'm in central NJ) with no special lights. It has a good window to be near and its been flowering indoors. i actually suspect that i have gotten more complete flowers indoors than out, so perhaps the full sun that i have it in is not the best. i even moved it to total shade for a few days to try to stimulate flowering (i don't know that this works but i had to try something) and as I stated in my last post now it is flowering and i moved it back to the sun and am hoping for the best.

Please do report back about what to feed it.

edit - the pictures are not showing sorry. it uploads and i see them in my message but when i press submit they disappear

yossb did you say you have your tree in NJ (lakewood i presume?) I am wondering what variety/strain your growing and if you started from seed, how long was it until you fruited? I have just started from seed with 3 different strains in NY.

@zomick

(not Lakewood actually), as i said in my post i am growing a braverman (rothberg california) and i got fruit the third year. please read my posts for more details. It may have been a one time fluke as i know others have never had success.

thanks, what are you feeding it and how often?

@zomick

trust me i'm clueless. i give it some type of miraclegrow knockoff that i got at walmart. i have one type thats all purpose and another that's for azaleas (and other acid loving plants) because i read somewhere that its good for lemons. i alternate those. i feed it maybe once every week and a half but sometimes less often. i water it almost every day when outdoors. i also sometimes put a spoonful of epsom salt in the water because of reading something somewhere about it...

Yossb

Would you be open to sending a cutting from your tree via mail? I'd pay for any expenses.

@zomick

send me a private message. i am "following" you so that should allow you to send me a private message

from houzz support:

You can message other Houzz users that follow you by going to their profile and clicking the message button you see there.

@aktie99 check out the ideabook i made (in my profile) for the pictures that i tried to post unsuccessfully. it seems to have worked there

Thank you Yossb, found the pics! Thank you! I know a little bit about the Etrog and Religious Jew's using them for Sukkot. We even downloaded a cute book for my daughter called Sammy Spider's first Sukkot, so cute! I did some reading on the trees, when I first figured out what kind it was. I bought it from a woman in CT who was moving. She only called it a lemon tree. She had cuttings and seed grown babies all over her house anywhere there was sunshine coming in the windows. I assume she was trying to grow another one, tho she was selling those too. Yes, I believe mine is from seed. Or it was a cutting that she rooted. I believe the woman is Jewish. I am in a online facebook citrus group & have learned tons from folks there. Soil conditions are best, when it's fast draining for citrus. I use fir and pine bark and perlite to help the soil drain really good. Also Hydrogen peroxide (1 tsp to a gallon of water can give the roots a boost/keep them from getting ill & dying) and epsom salts for magnesium, chelated iron for iron and some micronutrients, NPK fertilizer, bat guano for phosphorus--helps with flowering, hopefully fruiting eventually. If folks want the FB group I'm in it's: https://www.facebookdotcom/groups/58059164114/ take the dot out and replace with a period for the link to work when copying and pasting it in the search bar. Also Logee's might be wrong on some levels, but they have good info on others and they do sell trees that are cuttings or seed grown--not grafted when it comes to Etrog. The others vary tho.( I have one of their Ponderosa trees and it's rooted cutting and it's already flowered and fruited and is only like 3.) I know that you have to have a rooted cutting or a seedling grown Etrog, no grafting is permitted. I am not Jewish myself, however, I am all about trees. My indoor air quality & spirit is far far better, when they are all inside for the winter. I am in Massachusetts. I want to have a collection of all the citrus trees I can. I also grow other tropical fruiting trees in pots too. I followed you Yossb, so I can now see your photos. Your fruit is looking good! Hoping my tree will get there! Oh and she (former owner of my tree) was using Miracle Gro Acid Lovers fertilizer! So it does work for them. *However, not to brag, but just for the information, my tree has gotten far larger now with me vs when I got it. I can dig up some pics too. I have pics from when I got it and now how much bigger it is. I also use Citrus Mix Fertilizer OMRI organic 6-3-3. I also use Alaska Fish Emulsion 5-1-1 on the tree and some other stuff too. It's a work in progress here trying to figure out what it likes-needs and grows well with. I have changed things up every now & again cause it seems to like that. It's like in nature when a animal leaves nutrition for the trees, then a different animal comes and leaves something else, say bat guano or a dead animal decomposes there.. and so on.. this is my thought pattern for changing up the food from time to time.

Inside for the winter it got crazy tall! Lots of leaves too & all kinds of new growth.

I don't have a window this big it can get light from, so I got it taotronics red-blue lights & some mini sylvania CFL lights to brighten this dark corner. I also had a fan on it from time to time that alternated from heat to just room temp air. The ceiling here is very tall, wanna say 14 ft high. Tree was like 5 FT when I adopted it.

ill formed flower--male or incomplete flower.

when I first got the tree.

Anyways.. I'll take some new pics of it once all the leaves have finished growing back in. Going to feed it from 6-3-3 and Fish Emulsion plus some Azomite next I believe. --Heather :)

Oh and one other reason for my tree getting larger---I put it into a larger pot!!! It was rootbound in that pot it was in. You can root prune them to keep them to a certain size pot too.

Wow! Thanks for that great info! (I'll have to Google "root prune" to see what that is.)

YW @Yossb, here's a video by a friend in the citrus group: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzNZEH0NOEU He's pretty knowledgeable. He uses citrus gain and Dyna gro liquid for his trees.

Following! I have an Etrog citron that's 5 years old and is doing the same thing. Incomplete flowers. Interestingly, some of its brothers, also grown from seed from the same fruit, HAVE had complete flowers and even set fruit (which promptly fell off but still)

Some citrus varieties require pollination by a different citrus variety to produce fruit. (i.e. not self-fruitful)

I cannot cross-pollinate something that doesn't have the right parts to accept the pollen tho?!!

UPDATE: It's flowering again! This is the first time I have well over 100 flowers on the tree & one of the flowers happens to be fully formed! It's turning into a fruit! This is week one. I will post again below it with today's updated pic.

Congrats on the baby fruit! Crossing fingers that you can get some more from that nice flower cluster! :-D

Thanks, Jenny! There's more than a 100 other flower clusters too so maybe there will be more fruits!

Congrats! I would also point out that I use a product called Citrus-Tone to feed my Etrogs about quarterly. Also, I noticed some yellowing at the tips of the leaves which can indicate magnesium deficiency, so I gave them a very diluted solution of Epsom salts, and within a week they looked fantastic, with perfect flowers blooming.

And my potting soil of choice is the 5-1-1 mix you can find all over the internet. 5 parts fine pine bark, 1 part perlite, 1 part soil, and a touch of limestone added in

Thanks! My tree is on an OMRI organic diet. It gets all the nutrients, EDIT: these are older pics of the tree, no nutritional deficiencies! I use Epsom salts too! Thanks! :)

I don not see any yellowing of leaf tips. The new growth has a lighter green color, which is normal. It will darken later.

As i mentioned in my post above, yellowing of the lead tips indicates magnesium deficiency. Add a dilute Epson salt solution.

Hi everyone i have been following this line for quit some time and i am quit impressed keep on posting!!!I have planted one myself 4 years ago it has reached 2.24 metres and so far there are no fruits? there has also been infestation by teeny-tiny insects (almost invisible by human eye) and webs the whole tree , i have water sprayed it and deep cleaned every single leaf ! and 2-3- weeks later once again they have reappeared! If any-one has any solution and information I would appreciate . thanks a million.

Sounds like spider mites. Neem or end-all spray from amazon. Apply regularly and thoroughly, including the underside of the leaves

A (long) while ago i actually tried to use neem oil as i found a home remedy for insects infesting's (not the same mites i have now) and this is the ingredients which was recommended when typed on google:

1. Use a high quality, organic, cold pressed neem oil.
2. Use warm water if possible. ...
3. Mix the warm water with the soap first!
4. Then slowly add the oil while stirring vigorously.
5. Fill the mix into your sprayer
   i didn't use it on a sunny day (as they warned about) ,but the leaves got slightly discolored so i immediately stopped using it. Can it be the same case with the brought end-all product?

I use the end all and my leaves look great.

Spider mites are amoung the easiest insects to control on citrus. Just thoroughly spray the tree's leaves (upper and lower surfaces) along with the trunk, and branches with a semi forceful water spray.. Do this once a day for 2-3 days. If you give the tree a good water spraying every couple weeks during the spring and summer months you will have no further trouble. We use this method on large full grown citrus trees when ever we see mite symptoms. Saves on chemical, and the tree gets a clean bath which it fully enjoys.

Hi everyone thanks for the advice so far , and thanks specificely

for 1321Grower for the advice to get end all product , but as i live in England and delivery for this product cost a fortune so if any one can advise me on any product which has easy buying options for the UK i would appreciate it. Thanks in advance guys.

I am trying to source 4 Kosher ones for a Bar Mitzvah. Can anyone advise where I can buy them?

Hi Folks, I know I'm coming into this conversation late, but I did find some trees at Logees. Someone else said they're grown from seed. Still waiting to find out. And I did find some grown from seed on Etsy which is the requirement for them to be Kosher. But they come from seeds from commercial trees. Those may be grafted but the seedling was not, it was grown from a seed and it is own-root. Any sources of seedling trees would be much appreciated. Thank you!

I also am mystified by what will encourage pistil growth.

This year is shmita in Israel.

However, I wonder whether the hours of sunlight that the plant sees is a factor.

Yehuda

"Ideas why my Etrog (ethrog, Citrus Medica) tree flowers, but doesn't have the female parts of the flowers, thus no fruit??"

It should eventually produce some flowers that have female parts.

Age of the tree or temperature might have something to do with it, but if the tree produces enough flowers there should definitely be at least a fraction that will have female parts.

My 6 year old etrog tree only gives male flowers and no female flowers and no fruit. any advice?

Hi all! Just want to update that I now root prune pretty regularly (about once a year) and this past Sukkot I had four esrogim two of which were kosher for use!

Hi. I think I saw your story in the local newspaper with a photo of you holding those two proudly. Nice work! My friends and I have some questions about your setup. We are also growing locally. I have a few ten year old plants and my friend has some even older. But we can't get fruit. How can we get in touch?

Also... I assume you did not plant in the ground? (some authorities do not think that potted etrogim are kosher of course...)

@1321Grower I havent been in any newspaper. (I'm in NJ but not in Lakewood area). Yes it's in a pot that is brought in for the winter. You can read my earlier posts to see my 'setup' which is basically a south facing window for the winter. (The past 3 years I have also had a 24w grow light in a fixture that happens to be right above the tree indoors). I am no expert and have no great insight into how to succeed. I do suspect that root pruning may be important.

In your earlier post you wrote that you were only getting incompleate flowers on one tree while on the other tree the fruit keeps falling off. Is that still the case?

What is your fertilizer routine? Watering? I have still only gotten incomplete flowers. Haven't set any fruit since that one. I use Citrus tone mixed in with the soil when repotting, and water deeply but infrequently. I bring outdoors in the summer and repot in fall with root pruning each time

Wow it seems like you are doing everything right. All I can say is daven. I really dont have much of a routine. When I repot I use miraclegrow potting soil. I use Jacks citrus FeED. I dont have much to tell you unfortunatly. My tree seems to like to flower around shvat or adar while still indoors.

Assuming it doesnt take up too much of your time and space I would say just keep trying. Maybe switch windows if possible. Even just the delicious smelling leaves makes it worth growing and It's usually a pretty nice tree to look at as well.

BTW I am afraid I root pruned too aggressivly this year and I wonder whether I wiil miss a year or two now but time will tell.

Thank you. Glad at least someone is getting to enjoy these amazing fruits. And you're right, they are still great houseplants even without fruiting... just have to be careful about the bugs. Each time I repot I wash thoroughly and use all new soil, and put mosquito bits and sticky traps for the inevitable gnats. And spider mites! They certainly are high maintenance.

I think I could learn a thing or two from you about pest control. It always gets pretty bad over the winter and I don't think I have as much patience as you do to properly take care of the tree. I always tell my kids that life's rough for an esrog tree in New Jersey

Haha indeed it is

Been at this for over a decade and it doesn't get any easier!

Update: Tree is flowering. I hope this means my root pruning was not too aggressive as I feared

@1321Grower Thanks for the tip about mosquito bits for fungus gnats. I just started using it in my watering and I hope to have good results. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

What do you use for the also inevitable spider mites?

(BTW if you follow me I would be able to PM with you)