Probably around 7 to 10 years for first bloom. This Clementine/Yuzu hybrid took about eight if I recall. Although much after 5 years you start to lose track of the time, unless you label them with dates. Expect a very tall tree before it blooms...around 8 feet maybe?

Cuties® can be Clementines or Murcott mandarins, depending on the time of year. Clementines ripen (and are packaged) in late Fall and early Winter. Murcotts ripen in January and later. Murcotts should grow true-to-type, but I don't believe Clementines do.

I have an Algerian tangerine, which is what I believe Cutie's are. We asked our local nursery to order one for us, and it looked to be several years old when planted. We are in an area where citrus is grown commercially and ours is planted outside . It grew very well for several years, but never gave us fruit. Last season we got one fruit, and this season we finally got a substantial crop. I think it was with us for 4 years before the first fruit and 5 years before a substantial crop. They are a great tree to have, and the fruit is delicious and useful, you just have to be patient.

I already have a grafted spindly clementine, that needs to size up, next to meyer lemon and above fig. I don't mind waiting with these. They are attractive houseplants in their own right so far

bklyn, get yourself a Keraji mandarin. Really an attractive citrus -- from a houseplant perspective.

Were your Clementine seedlings (or anyone else's) thornless or thorny? Most seedlings I've had were thorny, but two of them were thornless, so I kept those two. What is normal for Clementine? Does anyone know how thornlessness is inherited?

Clementine is not really a particularly good tasting variety, in my personal opinion.

The seeds in Clementine will be all zygotic, which means they will not be genetic clones of the parent. This can make the variety Clementine useful as the fruit parent for trying to breed new varieties.

The phrase "true to seed" is a little bit of an inexact concept, but it is fair to say that with citrus varieties some tend to be much more "true to seed" than others.

As for Keraji mandarin, it is kind of similar to Satsuma mandarin but much smaller fruit size, more sour, and filled with seeds, slightly lower fruit quality. But it is notable for being a little bit more cold hardy than even Satsuma mandarins. An impressive feat for any citrus variety to be able to survive down to 12 to 14 F and still be as good tasting as that.

Clementine definitely does not have any special particular cold hardiness.

Apart from flavor or cold hardiness, I was interested in the origin of my observed thornlessness. From the Clementine? From the unknown pollen parent? Dominant/Recessive inheritance?

Clementine trees are nearly thornless.

After doing a quick search, I found conflicting information. I think probably sometimes they can have no thorns, sometimes they can have a fair number of thorns, but most often the trees are nearly thornless and only have just a small amount.

If your small Clementine seedlings do not have thorns, I would not read too much into that as a sign of anything.

Mine have some thorns but they are very tiny, not fully grown out and not too many. Practically thornless. I had a Keraji, very slow grower (one I had) stalled on me for some reason in a pot, then croaked. Nothing I tried worked and it received the same care as the others. Just might have been one of those you get from the mail order, that particular one being not a good specimen for whatever reason. It's not like you can pick one out on display in a nursery. You really roll the dice on this stuff sometimes. But that OK, you know that going in.

All of my mandarins are, for the most part, thornless. Sometimes I can find a very short thorn. My Clem-Yuz hybrid does have some thorns about 1/2 inch long. Maybe it comes from the Yuzu side, or maybe since it's a seedling tree, it's just because it's a seedling. However my Keraji is a seedling too and has no thorns.

My observation was that some seedlings very definitely had thorns and some seedlings very definitely had none (like "black and white"). All the same age; all of course still in the juvenile phase. It gave the appearance of a simple gene saying "no thorns".

Since Clementine is not true-to-type, any seedlings will display a range of characteristics. It could also have gotten pollinated by an orange or who knows what?