Here are 22 small trifoliate orange trees that we collected in the wild last weekend. They've all been potted up, and are ready to spend the fall and winter getting established in the pots. Then next spring I will have a nice supply of root stock for citrus graphs. I have a couple of unknown tangerine/mandarin orange trees that are our favorites.

 

CliffH

Cliff,do you know of a good citrus forum?I have a few myself,lol. Citrus can be a little more challenging than
figs.

The only one that I read was on GardenWeb (link below). That led me to the discussions on 5-1-1 soil mix, fig trees, and eventually this forum and my current fig addiction.....

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/citrus

Thanks,I think they have trifoliate in la.too. They might
call it swamp lemon out here. Ive never seen it grow wild,
very cool though.

Around here it turns into 20 ft tall bushy trees growing in wet areas. It puts out lots of suckers. If you find a mature tree there should be some little ones around it. It seems to grow fairly easy from the discarded fruit and seeds. If you can't find any let me know. I can come up with some seeds I am sure.

Cliff,
Great find on the wild trifoliate. Feel free to post here or PM with any other types of grafted orange trees you may be offering. Recently picked up a Satsuma with trifoliate rootstock and was interested in grafting cutting to hardy rootstock in the future. Any recommendations on a forum or site that has winter care for the trees? OR your advice. 
Great OT post!

For winter care, at least in your NJ area, they would have to spend the winter inside (house or greenhouse). The cold tolerance depends a lot on the type of citrus variety that you have. Some of the satsumas do have about the lowest cold tolerances of the orange type fruit. Down here they can stay out, and in ground, year round. The trifoliate rootstock would have to be treated the same way.

If you want trifoliate orange for rootstock, my best suggestion for your area would be to grow them from seed. That way your shipping cost would be low to grow something very common. They spout fairly easy and grow quickly in a sandy well draining soil.


CliffH

Lot of the wild trifoliate down here in S. Louisiana. It's a very thorny shrub/thicket that sends up tons of suckers, with worthless ping pong ball sized fruit. I see it a bunch on the edges of older cattle pastures in afternoon shade. The fruit are in season right now, the first ripe ones started second week of this month.

Hey Cliff, which graft will you use? Chip bud by any chance?

I know people that use the trifoliate oranges, seeds removed of course, to make an orange marmalade. They have said that it is very good.

So far, I have not tried to graph citrus. Next spring will be my first attempt. I am going to try graphing because my attempts at rooting citrus cuttings this last year have been a complete failure. Plus you can collect all the rootstock you want for free.

CliffH

Very nice Cliff.  I have very good luck bark grafting when the bark is slipping.  I saved a copy of the procedure that was posted on the Citrus Growers Forum before that site went down.  If you're interested in it let me know and I can e-mail it over to you.  

Greg, if you are willing to share that doc about grafting kindly send it my way. 

Cliff, have you grafted with this wild found trifoliate stock before? Good results?

Greg, could you please email that info to me also?  I was wondering what happened to the citrus forum.

@carbonfx - I have not tried citrus graphing at all yet. But most of the graphed citrus trees sold in Texas, and I believe much of the southern US, is graphed onto this exact same rootstock.

Just sent it over to you Cliff.  Let me know if it doesn't make it over to you for some reason.

Chapman and Robert, I don't see how to attach the doc from the e-mail links on this site so if you'd like it just send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll send it right over to you.  It was very helpful to me....lots of pics.

Here is what I have on hand and have come to recognize as a successful graft. 3 year old Brown's satsuma on trifoliate rootstock. Would like to start growing trifoliate now and use the new growth when I start to prime the satsuma, should have matching size rootstock and branch if all goes as planned, using a whip and tongue OR splice graft. 
This tree came from Stan Mckenzie in SC.

 

Look up "Thomasville Citrangequat" may be more hardy than Satsuma.