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Comment by asimpletune | Hacker News Reader

I picked some loquat the other day that were growing over a fence in my neighborhood. When I got home I just sort of stuck the seeds in a pot and forgot about them. A few weeks later they all started to grow! So I moved them all to large pots and have been every now and then day dreaming of all the other fruit I could grow.

Pawpaw feels like they would match the vibe of my loquat trees, and I bet they’d love the climate in Italy.

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Hold your hopes.

Citrus plants are known for being extremely easy to hybridize. If there is a non-loquat citrus tree around your neighbour's house, then it is very likely that you will not have loquats in your new tree. It might very well be a hybrid of something else with a loquat. It will take you about three years to discover that.

If you want to be 100% sure you're growing a loquat, you'd better grow it from a branch cut.

Not a terrible thought, and loquats are highly variable in fruit quality, but loquats aren't citrus so there is no chance they will hybridize with it. It's in the rose family thus genetically closer to pears and apples, and (apparently) can reliably be grafted to quince rootstock. I think it's highly unlikely that anything but another loquat will pollinate it. Perhaps you are confusing it with kumquat? http://www.dbnursery.com/brendas-blog/what-is-the-difference...

Are you thinking of kumquats?

More probable, Loquats are distant cousins of apples in the rose family.

Oh sh*t!

My bad ... English is my 3rd language and I still do these embarrassing mistakes on it.

It’s OK. Unless people are very familiar with those fruits a lot of native English speakers will mix them up focusing on the “quat” part of the name which is odd in English.

I'd venture to guess that many native speakers neither know what a kumquat or loquat is.

Being born somewhere usually confers a decent vocabulary, but rare things are rare in any case.

I once made loquat cardamom jam from my loquat tree and it was legitimately one of the most satisfying thing I have ever eaten. On a buttered english muffin it was otherworldly.

Take in mind that it needs water. Is not a Mediterranean fruit.

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