May 28, 2020
Even the fruit trees seem to be confused about what’s going on in these crazy times!
A keen home gardener at Taabinga Heights was astonished when he spotted this half-orange half-lemon growing on his navel orange tree last week.
The gardener, who wished to remain anonymous, said the tree usually produced about 30 navel oranges in a crop.
This year it produced just four, including this orange / lemon hybrid.
The other three pieces of fruit were normal navel oranges.
One half of the hybrid has lemon skin, while the other half is obviously an orange.
The gardener has shown the odd piece of fruit to a lot of people, and no one has seen anything like it before.
The best explanation so far is that the original navel orange tree was grafted on to a lemon tree stock, but the tree has never produced anything but navel oranges in the past.
The tree has now flowered again after recent rain, so the gardener is keen to see what his next crop looks like!
Did the halves taste any different or was it just skin deep?
He hadn’t cut it open yet … we are waiting to find out!
Will be interesting!