Oh dear, we thought we have seen (and grown) it all... the Buddha Hand Citrus( Citrus Medica Digitata), the Kaffir Limes ( citrus Hystrix) and the fashionable Meyer's Lemons! But alas there is a charming little newcomer trying to get into our botanical homes. The Caviar Lime or Finger Lime, Citrus australasica (syn. Microcitrus australasica).
Totally unknown to most gardeners and fruit lovers, this citrus species starts to make its timid entry on the European and US market.
We are talking about a relatively tiny,
very thorny shrub or small tree of lowland subtropical rain forest and
dry rain forest in the coastal border region of Queensland and NSW in
Australia.
The plant is 2–7 metres in height.
Leaves are small and glabrous, 1–6 cm long and 3–25 mm wide. Flowers are
white, flushed with purple, with 6–9 mm long petals and not very
showy.
"The seven species of Citrus previously
known as Microcitrus are the result of millions
of years of slow evolution from a primitive ancestral
types.
This type may have
resembled C. warburgiana, the New Guinea
species, which has small leaves and small, nearly spherical
fruits. From such an ancestral form, one line of evolution
produced the so-called native orange, round lime, or Dooja (C.
australis), that grows to a large tree and has subglobose
fruits much larger than those of C. warburgiana,
with long, slender, pointed, more or less twisted pulp-vesicles.
Another line of evolution culminated in C. inodora
and C. maideniana, highly specialized forms showing
adaptations to tropical rain forests, with large leaves and paired
spines; a third line of evolution led to the small-leaved species C.
australasica and C. garrawayae, both
with
long-ovoid or very elongated cylindric fruits.
Distribution
These
remarkable citrus fruits are extremely interesting, in that
they show how evolution has proceeded in regions isolated as Australia
and New Guinea have been during the last twenty or thirty million years
since they were cut off from all other land masses.
The evolution of other citrus fruits is not so easily followed, since Citrus,
Fortunella, and Poncirus
did not originate in regions that were geographically isolated in
definitely dated geologic eras. The group contains
seven species, five of which are native
to Australia with the other two found in New Guinea. The Australian
species occur in rainforests and their margins from Cape York
Peninsula south to the northern rivers of New South Wales. They
produce small, round or finger-shaped fruit, with a pleasant but very
acid juice.
Uses
They have
a close relationship with conventional
citrus fruit in the genus Citrus.
Australian native citrus
species are able to hybridise with a range of other citrus
species. This ability, along with drought and
salinity tolerance and disease
resistance, has long attracted the interest of citrus researchers and
breeders. Improved selections and hybrids of native citrus also have
potential in their own right for commercial production. Fruit is used in a
range of sweet and savoury processed products, such as marmalades and
sauces, and is in demand by chefs producing ‘Australian Native Cuisine’
dishes. Traditionally most fruit has been harvested from the wild.
Commercial orchard production began in the last decades of
the twentieth century ."
source: http://users.kymp.net/citruspages/australian.html#finger
The fruits though are real fun! Cylindrical, 4–10 cm long, sometimes slightly curved, coming in different colours and they look like fingers or tiny sausages.The skin can be green, orange, yellow or purplish red,
depending on the type and has a distinctive bush aroma.
The fun comes when you cut the fruit and discover the juicy, round pearls which are similar to caviar in size and texture.
The colour of these pearls ranges from white to pink, lime green and
yellow. When you bite into the finger lime pearls, they burst in your
mouth, releasing their tangy lime flavour.
For more information about the Microcitrus and other types of citrus trees you can browse these excellent pages:
Vivaio Oscar Tintori: http://www.oscartintori.it/
Pepinieres Bache: http://site.plantes-web.fr/baches/1292/boutique/49819/citrus_australasica.htm
Jardin Botanico Mundani from Mallorca: http://jardin-mundani.com/
Citrus Pages: http://users.kymp.net/citruspages/home.html
http://users.kymp.net/citruspages/australian.html#finger
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