Plant material of the limon real has been collected in Tarlac, Bontoc, and Bohol, and the fruit is at rare intervals offered for sale in small quantities in Manila.
The name of the plant, “Royal lemon,” indicates the esteem in which the fruit is held by the people, and while it is unfortunately true that most fruits tested have been too dry to be of any value, yet in the best types the fruits in quality and aroma surpass all lemons and limes that the writer has had the opportunity to sample. With its robust, thorny growth, large leaves and broad-winged petioles and considering its affinity to the lime and lemon together with the roundish oblate fruit with 34 to 35 stamens as against the 20 to 26 in those species and with its 10 to 14 locules, this plant is apparently as distinct from the lemon and lime as these species are from each other.
B. A. No. 1727 (Bontoc?).
Citrus excelsa var. davaoensis.
A thorny, arborescent shrub of straggly habit, with interlocking, drooping branches, and of vigorous growth; young growth green with tinge of purple; leaves 8.5 to 13.5 centimeters long, 3.8 to 5 centimeters wide, ovate to oblong ovate, crenulate to serrulate; base rounded; apex sometimes retuse; petiole 16 to 30 millimeters long, with wings ordinarily narrow, in large leaves sometimes 15 millimeters wide; flowers not seen; fruit 6.4 centimeters long, 8 centimeters in equatorial diameter, weighing 317 grams, oblate; base rounded; apex flattened to depressed, wrinkled, with a circular depression around the raised stigmatic area; surface otherwise fairly smooth, lemon yellow; skin thin, central cavity large; pulp contained in about 13 locules, light colored, quite juicy, sharply acid, and of good flavor; juice cells long and slender.
Ripe fruit of this species has been received from Davao, Mindanao, in December and January. The fruit is perhaps too large for retail trade, but might possibly be utilized in the manufacture of lime juice and allied products.
Full-grown plants of C. excelsa or the variety above described have not been seen, but C. e. davaoensis appears to be smaller than C. excelsa in all respects, the fruits excepted. There has been no opportunity for an examination of the flowers but so far as observed the plant appears more closely related to C. excelsa than any other species herein described.
B. A. No. 1009 (Davao, Mindanao).