We’ve been having a great loquat season here in North Florida, and one seedling loquat tree that’s been languishing in a neglected part of my grove has made its first crop of fruit. They’re outstanding, among the best loquat fruits I’ve ever eaten.
It’s always exciting when a new seedling tree starts making fruit for the first time – you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes the fruits on a tree grown from seed are inferior, often they’re pretty good, and sometimes they’re excellent. Those occasional superior seedling trees are the ones we propagate vegetatively, and distribute as named varieties.
The tag on this tree says that I planted it in 2004, from seed collected from the loquat trees at Larry Shatzer’s place in Orlando. Many years before that, Larry had collected all the best named varieties of loquat he could find, and planted them out in the landscape at his place. All those excellent loquat varieties cross-pollinate every year, mixing their superior genes, and so seedlings from Larry’s place have often turned out to have excellent fruit themselves. Larry has found a number of the seedling trees that have popped up at his property have made such high quality fruit that he’s named them and distributed them in the nursery trade as a series of high quality cultivars.
During the years the Edible Plant Project was active in Gainesville, we distributed many seedling loquat trees grown from seeds collected at Larry’s place, calling them “super loquats”, to distinguish them as being likely to make fruits superior to those on average landscape loquat trees. This tree is one of those “super loquats”, so it’s got good parentage.
It’s taken fifteen years from when I planted the seed for this tree until it fruited for the first time. I suspect that in a better growing situation, it could have fruited much faster – the tree was really in adverse conditions. Having gotten zero care from me for many years, it was covered by climbing vines and largely shaded by bamboo canes leaning over it. I’m impressed that this tree was able to make fruit at all in such a tough situation. The tree is about nine feet (3m) tall, and produced several clusters of fruit.
The fruits are oval, and some have a bit of a neck. They’re large, in the same size range of the largest named loquat cultivars I’ve encountered, with a flesh that’s a whitish cream-color to yellow (unlike the more orange color of some loquats). I didn’t get a chance to measure their weight, but I’ll do that next year. Many of the fruits have just a single seed, with the largest fruits having several seeds. Flavor is outstanding, very sweet, so delicious that I found myself saying out loud, “Wow!” several times when eating these. Based on the large fruit size and excellent flavor, I’d say this tree has the potential to produce fruit among the best of the named loquat varieties currently available in the nursery trade in Florida.
I’ve since cleared the vines and limbs that were shading this tree, so it now gets full sun during the mid part of the day. I will be taking much better care of it now that I know how special it is, keeping it clear of competing vegetation, keeping it mulched, fertilized and irrigated. If it can make fruit so good under adverse conditions, I’m really interested to see what it can do when given some pampering.
I’m also going to propagate this tree vegetatively, by grafting and air layers. If future fruit production is as good or better than this year’s crop, I’ll name it and distribute it as a superior loquat cultivar.
Location of the tree is at the grove grid 15K block in my fruit grove.
Florida Fruit Geek 
I never heard of this fruit before….thank you for the info!
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Thanks for commenting!
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What does it taste like? It looks like a pear!☺️❤️️❤️️
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Loquats are indeed a distant cousin of pear. I describe the flavor as 50% peach, the other 50% a mix of orange, pear, cherry, apricot. I recently wrote another blog post that has a more general introduction to this fruit: https://floridafruitgeek.com/2019/02/28/a-good-year-for-loquats/
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I’ ll check it out…thank you! ❤️️☺️❤️️
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Oh my, Craig, your story is so similar to mine this year! Except for the part about where your tree came from originally. I think a friend grew my first tree from a seed in Bartow and then I got a seedling from that tree and planted it at another location on my property. The first one had so-so fruit and grew rapidly and profusely. But then we had to cut it down to make way for a porch. The second one languished without attention and being taken care of for about 5 years and then this year it produced for the first time and were outstanding in flavor–much better than the mother. Last summer I bought a tree from Oliver Moore in Gainesville and have not yet planted it (happening soon!) but it produced some fruit last month that fits the size and description of yours–but the flavor is not as good as my second tree. Maybe they’ll cross and I’ll also get a super out of it! Thanks for your story–I’m super excited now!
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Wow, that’s great to hear that you’ve got such a good-flavored seedling! If it also has good fruit size, it might be worth propagating as another named variety. Part of what I hope to do with posts like this is encourage people to look at the loquat trees around them with an eye to evaluating them for fruit size/flavor/productivity, so we can crowd-source the search for the best loquat trees around. Keep us posted on how that tree does. Also, once the tree from Oliver is growing in the ground, it might produce even better quality fruits than it’s making growing in a container.
Thanks for commenting.
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Yes, exactly what I was thinking–when it gets in the ground could be even better! The one from Oliver also had some really large fruits and some with one seed. Didn’t have a lot of fruit being so small in a pot still. The one that’s so delish this year has standard size fruit with multiple pits.
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PC and pegjeffcamp, same person– 🙂
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That’s awesome, the flavor sounds amazing. Please let me know if you end up pruning and are willing to offer any scions. 🙂 I would love to try and graft this.
I have 2 loquats which are 1-2 year old… None of them fried yet. The most one I have is a seedling from Vista White… I’ll have to wait 7 years to see what the fruits would be like.
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Thanks for commenting! Right now, every available twig on this tree is going to local grafting projects. Over the last few weeks, the tree has started setting fruits again, so there will be an opportunity to further evaluate the fruits in its second production season. I’m taking much better care of the tree, now that I know how special it is. That should result in lots of new growth, so there should be twigs available for scion wood sharing in future years.
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