Sounds like your Yuzu is great for your climate, thanks for starting the thread.

Moro Blood is my most vigorous, it has reached about 10ft tall and wide in the five years it has been in the ground from a 5 gallon potted tree. It is from Durling on their semi-dwarf rootstock. All my other trees planted on the same rootstock at the same time range 6-8ft. Last season it had a huge crop, hundreds of oranges, this year only a handful, I need thin next time that happens to avoid alternate years it appears.

Toughest? Hard to say. My Fremont Mandarin probably produces the best fruit in spite of various conditions such as cold, sun burn, leaf damage / deficiencies, gophers.

My Navels, Valencia, and Tangelo are the most consistent all around, Cara Cara, Washington, Lane Late, Midknight, Minneola, all nice vigorous trees with solid crops yearly.

My Mandarins are certainly the most unique. Fremont: upright, prolific, amazingly long fruit season, awesome flavor, profoundly seeded. Owari Satsuma: weeping, inconsistent fruit sets but starting to produce better with age, nice seedless fruit. Gold Nugget: upright somewhat ugly tree with twisted leafs showing micronutrient deficiencies, ugly looking fruit, but awesome flavor in a seedless.

My Limes and Lemons are my most precocious. Meyer, Eureka, Bearss, Thornless Mexican, all have had their issues, these all show the most damage with cold temps. The Mexican drops leafs when it gets cold and only this year had its first big crop. The Eureka is sparse with folliage and hasn't produced many lemons and when it does they are small. The Bearss is very lanky with long spindly branches but the crop this year was big, need to prune it better I think. The Meyer is a small low profile tree for its age and shows yellowing leaves, nice crops though. Tarocco Blood is also in this category with inconsistent fruit quality.

My Nagami Kumquat is frozen in time, it is still a tiny two foot tree that gives enough fruit to make marmalade a couple times a year. If you want to bonsai a citrus tree buy one of these on a dwarfing rootstock.

I plan to add a Rio Red Grapefruit, a Tango Mandarin, and possibly an Australian Finger Lime this year. I also want Xie Shan and Shiranui Mandarins but cannot find anyone growing them in CA yet.

Look forward to hearing about other people's trees.

My sweetlee tangerine trees are my fastest as my picture will show

Sweetlee Tangerine · More Info

Sweetlee Tangerine · More Info

Sweetlee Tangerine · More Info

My poncirus trifoliata is outside in ground and unprotected and sails right through my -12F.

6b Steve

I think my citrumelos are the most vigorous, and toughest. I don't have a recent pic to upload now, but they are reaching for the moon, and sailed through the deep freeze last weekend.

Thanks for the excellent question; also thanks to all regular contributors on this forum, I've learned a lot from all of you.

I have: Meyer lemon, NZ lemonade, Moro blood orange, Cara Cara, Powell navel, kaffir lime, Key lime, Meiwa kumquat, and Encore mandarin. I am in Auckland, New Zealand. All trees planted in ground, in full sun, the oldest for 10 months; all have had at least one flush, and I had removed all fruits formed in spring. Right now my trees are having their first summer. Fastest growing by far is the kaffir lime. Its growth flushes are basically continuous: the previous flush has not even hardened completely, and I find dark maroon colored new leaves poking out. In return, I am watering and feeding the tree very well. Every new leaf is a pot of curry / stew in my eyes, so this is the tree that gives me the absolute most joy right now!

It is beginning to look like we will see different folks reporting all manner of different citrus as most vigorous. Maybe one will beam out as a real winner but I'm guessing a lackluster weakling for one region, maybe Texas, will be a really winner in another area, like New Zealand. That in itself is interesting and might help us understand how important soil supplements, micronutrients, microbes, pH, temperature, growing season, and sun exposure are when we select a location on our property, dig the hole, prepare the soil for planting, and maintain our tree after planting.

So my most vigorous growth and production is probably from my calamondin tree. I was running out of sunny spots in my yard so I just planted it near a mature pecan tree. It has grown into a very beautiful and productive tree in spite of whatever competition it has from the pecan. It's not my favorite fruit but seems quite hardy, blooms often, and bears lots of fruit.

The calamondin is in the back left

I really struggle getting the Moro blood orange to thrive. It's the little tree in the foreground. It's more sensitive to the cold and just seems to be less tolerant of my mostly hands-off approach to growing citrus.

I'll have to mention the Ponderosa lemons since they seem to grow like weeds here in SE Texas. They come up from seed wherever I throw them...even sowing them on my lawn grass...and they grow rapidly if planted in reasonably aerated, soil...meaning I fluffed up and added organic mulch to my clay soil. There is a Ponderosa lemon in the photo in the background immediately to the left of the pecan tree trunk.

Great thread! I've been detoxing from social media, so my interactions here have declined. I am here, just not quite as often ;-). John, that is a massive calamondin tree!! I can envision gallons of marmalade! I am not sure which is my most vigorous...the Meyer lemons seems to always be growing and blooming, but have also given me the most trouble this winter, so they will need to catch up the spring when they go back outside. My Seville orange and calamondins have certainly behaved very well - lots of growth and the calamondins have lots of fruits considering their small size. I don't know...it's a great question. Oh...one I just thought of...I think the most vigorous and least problematic for me has been the baboon lemon. I think that tree has lost 3-4 leaves this winter, is holding on to the lemons it has, and is loaded with blooms and sprouts again - even though it has one of the lowest light locations of all my trees.

Nice key lime. The truck is pretty thick for only 1.5 year old. Hope you get blooms by the end of year!

Most vigorous is easily my seed-grown Pomelo, followed by my variegated Eureka.

Josh

Rio red grapefruit tree has quadrupled in size since 2013 planting. It produces so many fruit that I'm getting branches breaking from the weight and recent rains.

My most vigorous from seed would have to be the Seville/Sour/Bitter Orange and maybe Pomelo.

Have planted lots of Citrus over the years from seed (sweet oranges, lemons, mandarins, etc..), but I currently find myself surrounded by dozens of Seville Oranges and one Pomelo. All the other citrus were purchased as established plants/trees.

Seems like something of a small pattern is emerging, with grapefruit (and grapefruit hybrids), sour oranges, and key limes / certain lemons being commonly praised. I wonder if that can be generalized to: sour fruit are more vigorous, generally, than sweet? If that continues to be a pattern, I'd guess it's because the tree is devoting less sugar per fruit, and therefore there's more available for growth.