A Citrus Gang-Bang… Makrumons, Kalakruts, Lemmes?!!

43 Responses

1. How I wish I could get cuttings of those! *envious much*

2. this is too funny, MM! those are mean-looking makruts! am so inggit! i have been largely unsuccessful making lime trees bear fruit except for calamansi. i have two beautiful calamansi bushes that have striped green and white fruit.

3. I am GREEN with envy. My mom’s dayap when we were children generously yielded so many fruits that we were having lime juice almost every day. Nowadays, I can’t even find dayap. I saw some in S&R which I think came from USA but so expensive. The key lime pie in Mamu is very good. I hope we have more supplies of these different limes! I haven’t been successful in growing citrus here in Paranaque. Maybe the soil is not good for citrus. :(

4. The topmost photo looks like an alien specimen….with the tentacles….darn, i’m watching too much scifi films….for the dayap, you should try making a buko sherbet with dayap rinds…this is a typical kapampangan dessert during fiestas…

5. thank you very much for this post, MM! I have planted (from seed) several makrut and dayap trees and although they’ll still fruitless at this point in time, your info has given me much, much hope! They’re taller than me by several feet na. But I guess, they’re just about 3 years old. Congrats on your citron-ous success!

6. Lovely post, MM……as always, but am so jealous my citrus adventure has not been as successful. I ‘ll have to simply wait perhaps as my calamansi and lone makrut are just yielding leaves.

   But talk about plant orgy . My hydrangeas in my Maryland garden are doing just that and surprised me with different kinds of blossoms all in one bush the following seasons, not quite like the original blooms when I first got them.

7. MM the best way to cut those citrus is by the sides like squaring them out, leaving just the center to get the most of juices out of them… then the center… you just twist them.

8. hi mr. MM! kafir lime leaves are used for curries and such too, right?

9. I’m a little confused:
   “you should start new citrus plants from seeds, as they will be prone to cross breeding or mutt-ification as I like to describe it. If you have new citrus plants from marcotting or part of a mother plant, then it is less likely to get raped by its neighbors, yielding odd fruit and ruining its progeny for generations to come.”

   Should it be “you SHOULDN’T start new citrus plants from seeds”?

10. This post reminded me of Father’s dayap and calamansi trees. He used to look at them with pride.
    Going to your citrus plants It is a bumper crop alright, MM! Lucky you. But we really have to count our blessings. I, too counted my (measly) harvest of blackcurrant; two bushes yielded only 15 berries, LOL! But on the foraging front, I CAN SAY LIFE IS GOOD. I have had my first walk through my favourite mushroom haunt and found the place teeming with pied-de-mouton. There are blueberries to pick in the forest wild plums along deserted roads, and a nutcase planted gourds along the the trail where I walk my dog. I believe the nutcase was a deer that ate the gourd from someone’s garden last year then released the seeds in its poo :)))…Have a happy Thai dinner!

11. Rona Y, you are completely correct, it should read “shouldn’t” and will revise post now. Thanks!

12. Most mangoes planted today are grafts coming from a few “superstar” trees mostly from either Zambales or Guimaras. I’ve seen some grafted Makrut lime trees, but since the leaves are the main product, I never really bothered to buy them. Is there a culinary value to the skin of the fruit, or does it just have the same flavor profile as the leaves?

13. Hahaha! I so enjoyed this article! I can feel your joy and excitement about these baby fruits from across the internet waves!

    The little mutant lime was too funny!

14. The kaffir rind is great mixed in with red curry paste. I’ve actually attempted to squeeze them but they are too hard! Recipes also just call for leaves or rind and lime (not kaffir) juice. So when I make Thai food, I buy both kaffir and the normal limes.

    My father used to have a calamansi farm in nineteen kopong-kopong. Yup, all of them were from grafting or marcotting (don’t know which but I heard these words) from a mother plant which had a great productive history. Yun nga lang, na-peste his farm and he had to burn everthing so as not to infect the other crops.

15. i still can’t forget the dessert i had at one of the lakeside restaurants by laguna de bay a long time ago – lightly candied dayap halves stuffed with yema. there were others stuffed with nata de coco and macapuno, but of course i chose the more fattening type. ;-)

    i wonder why indigenous, ingenious and “genius” desserts like this are not promoted at all. in fact, i’m not sure if anybody does it anymore.

16. The title immediately captured my attention, sex does sell. Although the post is all about lime/citrus sex..haha. Really interesting and enriching post Sir Marketman.

17. Dayap is really indispensable…the aroma is much sweeter and milder than calamnsi.Personally, I prefer dayap over calamasi but I wonder why its productiotion never reached commercial scale in the Philippines.Good thing I have 2 fruiting dayaps and a makrut or (Kabuyaw in Tagalog)in our backyard for personal consumption, and the surplus I sell to a nearby small thai restuarant owner who whines about the absence of dayap in the market.
    I planted 10 dayap trees in our farm in Batangas 5 from seeds, 3 marcotted and 2 grafted…Hopefully I would be able to plant more Dayap trees…Dayap is a part of Philippine food culture particulary in the Tagalog-Kapampagan region and to preserve the indigenous food culture, I figured, the cultivation and utilization of indigenous fruits and veggies should be encouraged.

18. What a bizarre but thoroughly entertaining post. I was completely boggled by the “mongrelization” that happened with your plant. :-)

19. Many fruit do not come true from seed–citrus, apples and their ilk, avocados…which is why these are almost entirely grown as grafted trees (there is a reason for grafting!).

20. Thanks! It explains a lot about why our planted seeds never amounted to much. Will have to try marcotting some kaffir lime trees–but can we bring saplings or similar into the Philippines?

21. Ha!ha! Your sense of humor is again at work! But still, very informative article.

22. Major, major Venus Raj like this post. Sexually-charged citrus posts make my morning. hahahaha

23. mmmmmmmmm makrut! love how they smell.

    old family cooking tip:

    if you cut the dry hairy lime lengthwise instead of crosswise you would be surprised how much more juice you can get. ;)

24. Oh no! I am growing a calamansi plant from seed. It’s older than my youngest kid so it’s at least 5 years old; and still not bearing fruit. When we used to take it outside every so often, it would either burn when exposed to direct sun at noon, or get damaged by frost if left outside overnight (we live in TN). Being a protective mama and being “takam” that I would one day have nice calamansi fruit for juice or cooking, I kept the plant indoors from then on. It’s growing great — it’s now up to my shoulder in height… but still won’t bear a single fruit. To marketman and readers: Any suggestions on how I can coax my plant to give me some calamansi fruit? Or is my plant a lost cause? Help!

25. I love the Title of your Post!
    And as usual, it is a very well written and informative article.

    I’ve been following your blog for a few years now (this is the first time I’m commenting though), and I am amazed at so many things:
    Your desire to share anything and everything food-related
    Your willingness to reveal your rants & raves of things non-food
    Your selflessness in helping others (the feeding program & the school)
    Your steadfastness in maintaining the Blog’s ethical purity and fun
    And your Lechon Adventures. :)

    Thank you so much for making my day, everyday.

    *And I pray for the day when Zubuchon opens in Manila!

26. Sandy, hello? :) Did you ever wonder how the kalamansi would bear fruit if it was all by its lonesome? It needs another kalamansi tree to tango with, no? :) Dogbone, thanks, just plodding along to about the 7th anniversary of the blog… :)

27. If you manage to plant a citron plant (or a buddha’s hand – the weird alien citron fruit plant), imagine what the floating citrus sperm could end up creating – green handlike bumps on the lime/makrut!

28. Rose crossed potato with rutabaga once during her 4H Club days and was utterly flustered by what to call the product, rutatato or potabaga.

    @ El Jefe, makrut = kabuyao? This is thunder bolt out of the blue for me just like when Marketman correctly suggested Key limes are our native dayap . The kabuyao I am familiar with is midway between the size of an orange and a grapefruit. Covered with large pimples that tended to reshape its roundness. They were gathered in the wild for use as a cost-free souring agent in my town. I imagine they grow (grew) freely too over in Laguna where they have a town named after it.

29. Footloose, wiki makes the link, and so does this other wiki link on Cabuyao. Cool, I have definitely learned something new today. And in the second site, it mentions the fruit is used in shampoo, isn’t that neat, they had Zest like smelling hair in the 1500’s!!! :) Thanks El Jefe!

30. You had me at “makrukaladay”
    *LOL*

31. Hey, MM! According to a website about growing citrus

    https://www.fourwindsgrowers.com/tips-and-advice/growing-dwarf-citrus/in-containers.html,

    they are self-pollinating…. I will definitely will not comment on the equivalent term for that in the plant orgy line of discussion. :p

    And by the way, any tango-ing with another kalamansi would be quite premature since my dear little plant has not even grown flowers. However, I will heed your advice and get myself another plant. Who knows? That might just get their juices flowing!

32. Funny… :)

33. Just found your blog site by accident and OMG what great articles you have. Following XD.

34. Hi MM,
    You might find this article interesting
    https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/gone-bananas/content?oid=1341652
    The subject is a high school classmate of mine.
    You’ll be amazed at his work.

35. Marketfan, I have actually read about that friend of yours in another newspaper or magazine before… cool. Sandy, how odd, if they were self polinating, then how did my limes get raped? :)

36. Hey footloose! May I know where you’re from? Kabuhyaw or Kabuyew used to be common in Nagcarlan Laguna…I see them growing in profusion on the hedges of coconut groves..and yes MM they are used as shampoo in the olden days as it is believed to have anti fungal properties…”anti- balakubak” hehe! Biyasong on the other hand a species of bohol citrus is quite similar in scent but milder and the fruits are elongated. Footloose, may I know where your from? Maybe you are pertaining to another type of Philippine citrus which is BILOLO…the fruits are round and it is used as a souring ingridient…my grand father from batangas used to source his adobong baka or adobong kabayo with BILOLO…but unfortunately bilolo is hard to find nowadays…gone are the forests and the vast coco plantations…I hope I would be able to collect fruits and plant the seeds thats why Im asking where ur from…
    MM=cross pollination is a common thing among plants pollens from another plant can rape a plant located miles away…pollination occurs naturally though factors such as wind, water, insects…animals or human intervention. Hence marcotted/budded/grafted would produce a ”TRUE to TYPE” offsprings with genetic composition or exact copy and having simmilar attributes or qualities as the parents…(“,)

37. I grew up in Bataan and the kabuyaw I was referring to as I said above are a lot larger than even the largest makrut I have ever seen. The scent is quite different too although they find similar use as adjunct to gugo for shampooing. The rind is covered with eruptions probably due to insects burrowing in them since they grow in the wild. This does not matter because one only uses the pulp for the juice anyway and if you did not avoid the rind, the juice you are bound to squeeze would be execrably acrid (maaskad). This distinguishing feature of course gave my townfolks a picturesque simile for kids with bumby heads. They were usually said to be “ipinaglihi sa kabuyaw.”

    Did not demur to your assertion because, as indicated in the post itself, there is indeed rampant promiscuity going on in the citrus world and one can never be certain as to one’s identity and antecedents.

38. Hahaha! ”ipinaglihi sa kabuyaw” I thought ”maasim ang mukha kaya mukang ipinaglihi sa kabuyaw” hehe! Mmmm…What town in Bataan? Gotta search for ”Kabuyaw” that you are pertaining to…My friend is from Orion…and theres a village in that town called ”daang bilolo” mmm…gotta research on that…with regards to citrus acridity or ”askad/kahat” or ”paras” in kapampangan, it is caused by a bacterial strain that causes Citrus Canker, a common citrus pathogen that causes eruptions on the skin with slimy exudate.
    Thanks footloose for the info I appreciate it!

39. @Footloose..Hahaha! ”ipinaglihi sa kabuyaw” I thought ”maasim ang mukha kaya mukang ipinaglihi sa kabuyaw” hehe! Mmmm…What town in Bataan? Gotta search for ”Kabuyaw” that you are pertaining to…My friend is from Orion…and theres a village in that town called ”daang bilolo” mmm…gotta research on that…with regards to citrus acridity or ”askad/kahat” or ”paras” in kapampangan, it is caused by a bacterial strain that causes Citrus Canker, a common citrus pathogen that causes eruptions on the skin with slimy exudate.
    Thanks footloose for the info I appreciate it!

40. I’m from Abucay which is separated by Balanga and Pilar from Orion. The citrus I am thinking of might very well be what you call bilolo. Btw, kapampangan paras, if I remember it right is our Tagalog anghang which you get from say sili, specially labuyo. Askad is a completely different taste, it is bitter and stinging, something that you would reflexively spit out.

41. very funny post and informative! thanks!

42. Yeah Im familiar with Abucay…Thanks for the info footloose! I love Bataan…Im wondering why your province is always bipassed by food documentarists. I honestly think that Bataan has so much to offer particularly when traditional fool culture is concern. I remember my dormates in college who are from Pilar and Orion…they are good cooks and they love their food…I remember them bringing Tinapang bangus…shrimps dipped in ripe tamarind sauce,Bidbid soup pansit, orani and baked buchi! yum! (“,)

43. Oh El Jefe, you make my nape hair stand on end. Bidbid is one word I hear only from family. They come into the fish ponds as microscopic fries along with shrimps and a variety of small fishes called singaw as the fish pond water are refreshed. Absolutely bony, that’s probably why they are made exclusively into fishballs for lugaw and misua soup.

    Tinapa be it banag (mullet) or the younger ones called kapak, and types of sardines called tunsoy and sinilyase are incredibly tasty specially when partnered with burong malibanos or balaw-balaw. I make a credible balaw-balaw here in Toronto complete with the angkak pink coloring.

    Orion has stopped producing their famous tuyo so it’s now known only as where Balagtas settled and where Cayetano Arellano was born. Abucay happily still supplies the rest of Bataan (and to a very small extent, me in Toronto) with the best bagoong alamang and as mentioned elsewhere here, excellent putong puti.