Is it a good idea to root cutting from a favorite orange tree, or will the tree not produce fruit or sour fruit? I've asked a couple of people, but they are mostly uneducated on the subject, and they told me that I would get very sour fruit or no fruit at all reproducing an orange tree from cuttings. Help! Thanks, Linda
???? No fruit or sour fruit? Why would they think that? It will be the same as the tree it came from. You might not get great fruit on the first harvest (not sure about that, wait for an expert to chime in) but the fruit will definitely come if you raise it well, and the fruit should be the same.
If you root a cutting of a branch of the tree , then it will be the same, but if you mean a root cutting from the roots then, If the tree is grown on its own roots from seed, then a root cutting should grow to be the same tree, but there is the leaf node count, i have no idea wether the count is stored in the roots, if it is it will grow and produce fruit, if not it may take years to fruit If the tree is grafted, then taking a rot cutting will give you a rootstock tree, producing probably a very sour or unusable fruit such as trifoliata or citrange, if you were lucky it might be sour orange or a lemon
If the host tree is grafted, take the cutting from the scion and not the rootstock. (An example of a graft can be found here.) If the tree is on its own roots, take the cutting from a portion of the tree that is currently bearing fruit (and is thus mature). In both cases the resulting tree will be genetically identical to the host tree. Propagation by cutting would be preferable to trying to do so by seed which I believe you're considering doing in [thread=47987]this[/thread] other thread. The tree would bear fruit much sooner and the entire tree would be productive unlike its seedling counterpart in which a portion will always remain juvenile.
Thank you for all your replies, they have been very helpful. I probably won't put the seeds in soil until around March. By then, the frost warnings and possibility of frost and/or freeze will be nil. Thanks again!
genetically it will be the same as for the same quality fruit that all depends on what fruit he is getting a cutting from. there are citrus that do good on the own roots grapefruits, pummelos, some lemons, limes juice oranges some tangeloes and tangerines. but there are others that cannot grow well in our florida soil even some of those mentioned will struggle some. rootstocks are chosen for allot of things but one of the main ones is resistance to soil pathogens and whatnot.