{"id":2352832,"date":"2026-03-31T12:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T12:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2352832"},"modified":"2026-03-31T12:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T12:53:14","slug":"is-your-citrus-tree-still-alive-or-just-the-rootstock-entertainment-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/is-your-citrus-tree-still-alive-or-just-the-rootstock-entertainment-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Is your citrus tree still alive \u2014 or just the rootstock? | Entertainment\/Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Growing citrus in Louisiana has been a real struggle the past couple of years.<\/p>\n

Our recent winters have brought intense, though short-lived, arctic blasts that have damaged and even killed citrus trees. All it takes is a night or two of temperatures in the teens to wipe out an unprotected citrus crop, especially in the case of cultivars that are more sensitive to the cold, young trees and those in containers.<\/p>\n

With spring \u2014 and warmer weather \u2014 upon us, you may be noticing new growth sprouting from a citrus tree that sustained damage this winter. It\u2019s important to figure out whether these shoots are coming from the citrus cultivar you want to grow or the rootstock.<\/p>\n

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Trifoliate orange is a common rootstock for many citrus species.<\/p>\n

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\n LSU AgCENTER PHOTO BY OLIVIA McCLURE<\/span>
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A quick lesson on grafting is in order. The vast majority of modern citrus trees are grafted, which means a section of wood from a desirable cultivar, called a scion, is cut and joined with a separate species known as rootstock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This creates a new tree \u2014 one that produces fruit on the scion wood on top and that has a hardy, more vigorous root system.<\/p>\n

Rootstock allows citrus cultivars like lemons, oranges, satsumas and kumquats to better thrive in our climate and handle other stresses such as diseases. While most kinds of citrus are still quite vulnerable in cold temperatures, they\u2019d be even less hardy if grown on their own roots. Rootstock also can help maximize the quality and quantity of fruit.<\/p>\n

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Trifoliate orange trees produce small, extremely sour fruit on thorny stems.<\/p>\n

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\n LSU AgCENTER PHOTO BY OLIVIA McCLURE<\/span>
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Trifoliate orange (Citrus trifoliata) is one of the most common rootstock species used in the citrus trade. Flying Dragon (Poncirus trifoliata \u2018Flying Dragon\u2019) is popular for dwarf citrus trees.<\/p>\n

These tough species can survive subzero temperatures and work great as rootstock. But when allowed to grow as full-sized trees, rootstock species don\u2019t produce tasty fruit. In fact, their fruit tends to be extremely sour, even bitter, and full of seeds. And, unlike other types of citrus, their branches are covered with unsightly thorns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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So, take a close look at your citrus tree. Do you see thorns on the new growth emerging from the base? If so, that\u2019s the rootstock, and it\u2019s possible that the desirable citrus cultivar died during our freezes this winter.<\/p>\n

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The presence of thorns is a good way to tell whether a citrus tree is a rootstock species such as trifoliate orange.<\/p>\n

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\n LSU AgCENTER PHOTO BY OLIVIA McCLURE<\/span>
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Apart from folks who are interested in grafting, there\u2019s little point to keeping a trifoliate orange or other rootstock tree around for the average home citrus grower. If you\u2019re sure that you only have rootstock left, it\u2019s best to cut down the tree and replace it with a new one.<\/p>\n

If your preferred citrus cultivar still seems to be living but you see a few thorny rootstock shoots at the base of the tree, now\u2019s a good time to trim those back to keep them from taking over the tree. They can grow quickly!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing citrus in Louisiana has been a real struggle the past couple of years. Our recent winters have brought intense, though short-lived, arctic blasts that have damaged and even killed citrus trees. All it takes is a night or two of temperatures in the teens to wipe out an unprotected citrus crop, especially in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2352833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2352832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Is-your-citrus-tree-still-alive-\u2014-or-just-the.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2352832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2352832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2352832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2352834,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2352832\/revisions\/2352834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2352833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2352832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2352832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2352832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}