

Fruits All Tjie Year Round. 59 



Kumquat. The very small, oblong or olive-shaped fruit of this bushy 

 tree is peculiar in being edible throughout — rind and all. The 

 rind is thick, yello^', smooth, and sweet-scented. The pulp con- 

 tains many seeds. Prolific, but more odd than useful, as there 

 is very little pulp about the fruit. 

 C. LIMETHA. The sweet lime; skin tight, smooth and very thin, of a 

 pale yellow ultimately, inclosing very pale, sweet juice without piquant 

 flavor. Widely but not extensively grown in India, chiefly from seed. 



C. limetta Risso. The true lime. A shrub useful for hedges, from 

 which the best lime juice is obtained. A few of the best known varieties 



are: 



1. Perette. 



2. Dulces. 



3. Mexican. 



4. Persian. 



C. limonium Risso. The true lemon. The lemon is now attracting the 

 attention of growers very widely, and any information about this fruit will 

 therefore be interesting at the present time. While its near relative, the 

 orange, has been the subject of many ai tides and books, this equally use- 

 ful fruit is as yet possessed of a meagre literature. 



The true lemon is the fruit of Citrus limonium, a variety of C. medica 

 (the citron, in the widest sense of the word). It is n igenous to northern 

 India. 



The lemon is less hardy than the orange and requires a frostless situa- 

 tion or a locality nearly free of frost. In favored situations the lemon will 

 blossom and bear fruit throughout the entire year, and as the area that can 

 be devoted to lemon culture is smaller than that available for orange grow- 

 ing, the business offers yet greater inducements. 



Soil. — The lemon delights in a sandy loam, but thrives in other soils. 

 If the stock used is a seedling orange the soil best adapted to the orange 

 will yield satisfactorv returns, and in selecting either the land or the stock 

 this should receive consideration. The orange, or the lemon, while doing 

 well on low ground in our va.leys, is now generallv conceded to do better 

 on our warmer hillsides and mesas, where freer from frost. The moderat- 

 ing influence of proximity to saU water, says Wickson, is an element favor- 

 ing the lemon grower. 



Lemon curing.— It has been fully demonstrated that the lemon can be 

 successfully grown in Southern Calif rnia and that the product is the equal 

 of the imported fruit and the superior in quality of much of the foreign 

 grown article. The lemon, as taken from the tree, is not in condition for 

 marketing, and the science of curing and packing must be as thoroughly 

 mastered as the art of growing a superior article, to secure a required grade 

 of merchantable fruit. 



Cut, not pull, the fruit * henever it gets to a merchantable size, and as 

 soon as the faintest approach of the yellow color is discernible. 



Handle very carefully and tenderly, as the least bruise will develop 



