New Zealand Lemonade

'Lemonade' is reported to be a sweet lemon hybrid of unknown parentage with a very pleasant taste, and can be readily but not easily peeled. The fruit is small-medium, and not very seedy. The trees are semi-dwarfed (on trifoliate rootstock), but quite productive. The main crop matures in early spring in New Zealand, with much smaller summer crops also occurring. Unfortunately there is no commercial production in New Zealand, although it is a popular home garden tree. It is susceptible to citrus scab disease, however in a drier climate this should be less of a problem. (This information redacted from an email from Andrew Harty via Peter Chaires, 12/07/2005) Although the budsource trees are derived from trees at the Citrus Clonal Protection Program that tested negative for all known graft-transmissible diseases, trees of ‘Lemonade’ propagated in Riverside have shown a tendency to develop small brown to black lesions on the bark. The reason for these lesions is currently unknown.^⁠[1]

Individual grower reports describe sweet-tangy, low-acid impressions, but the accounts vary with fruit and ripeness. One first-harvest grower called the fruit low-acid relative to a regular lemon; a Houzz grower described one green fruit as about one-quarter as sour as Meyer, with similar sweetness, and thought it might be underripe. These are unmeasured reports about individual fruit, not standardized taste scores or cultivar-wide values.^⁠[5]⁠[6]

Grower reports describe New Zealand Lemonade as lemonade-like, with lemon and a mandarin hint, and a fairly juicy sample; one presenter estimated it was half as sour as lemon without using a defined tasting scale. A separate two-fruit comparison found slight tang in greener fruit and no sourness in an overripe fruit. These subjective reports describe individual samples, not a standardized taste or cultivar-wide acidity level.^⁠[8]⁠[9]