One Plant at a Time: Lime Tree

Today's plant is the lime tree. Now of course that could mean two things. In the cooler parts of the English speaking world, the lime tree that will grow is what I call a linden, Tilia species, with their grand stature and splendidly fragrant flowers. But here in zone 10, the lime is Citrus x latifolia, the Bearss lime or Persian lime, with its seedless yellow fruits.

Yes, yellow. Limes are sold green so customers can easily tell them from lemons. When you grow them at home they ripen to a lovely, slightly paler than lemon, yellow, before getting so mature they fall off the tree. Once you are accustomed to distinguishing them, limes stand out in yards all over town. I always wonder whether the people who pick my limes expect lemons and are surprised when they slice them and find pale green pulp. The lime is my most prolific citrus, even though it gets the least sun of all of them.

I chose limes today because I am going to make another batch of marmalade. Limes are what I have in abundance, and I hate to waste them. The passersby don't take them all. Whether I prefer the flavor of lemon or lime depends on which I am eating at that moment. The primary drawback of limes for marmalade is that the skin is thin and gets tough when cooked with sugar, even if I cook it until it is seriously soft before adding the sugar. I am going to try almost puréeing the peels and see how it is with a smoother texture and no pieces of peel big enough to be leathery.

I also chose limes because many of the photos I took yesterday of other plants did not come out well. In this photo you can see the leaves, a ripe lime, lime blossoms, and the tiny fruits that will be next year's lime crop.

The common Persian or Tahitian lime like almost all our citrus fruits is a hybrids of hybrids, in this case probably key lime and lemon, both themselves crosses. Extremely rarely it has viable seeds which, being monoembryonic (rather than nucellar like much citrus) don't breed true, and sterile pollen. It comes from neither Persia nor Tahiti, but somewhere in tropical or subtropical Asia. It arrived in Europe via the Silk Road, and thus was thought of as Persian. It arrived in California from Australia via Tahiti in the 19th century.